Title | The pull-in of symmetrically and asymmetrically driven microstructures and the use in DC voltage references |
Publication Type | Conference Paper |
Year of Publication | 2002 |
Authors | Rocha, L. A., E. Cretu, and R. F. Wolffenbuttel |
Conference Name | Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference, 2002. IMTC/2002. Proceedings of the 19th IEEE |
Pagination | 759 - 764 vol.1 |
Keywords | 10.5 to 11 V, 9.1 to 9.5 V, asymmetrically driven microstructures, DC voltage reference, electrostatic actuators, electrostatically actuated microbeams, epi-poly process, equilibrium point coordinates, freestanding lateral beam, hysteresis, integrated silicon microsystems, local continuation method, long-term device stability, measurement standards, mechanical stability, micromachining, on-chip voltage reference, pull-in microstructure, reproducible pull-in voltage, static pull-in, surface micromachining, symmetrically driven microstructures, Taylor series, two dimensional energy-based analytical model, voltage measurement |
Abstract | Micromechanical structures have been designed, fabricated in silicon and tested for use as on-chip voltage reference Applications are in electrical metrology and in integrated silicon Microsystems. Microbeams of 100 mu;m length, 3 mu;m width and 11 mu;m thickness are electrostatically actuated with a very reproducible pull-in voltage. The structure can be either symmetrically or asymmetrically actuated, resulting in different pull-in voltages, as well as different operational specifications e.g. hysteresis and reproducibility. A two dimensional energy-based analytical model for the static pull-in is derived for both actuation types and compared with measurements. Devices have been designed and fabricated in an epi-poly process. Measurements show a pull-in voltage in the 9.1-9.5 V range for the asymmetric case and 10.5-11 V range for the symmetric case, both in agreement with modeling. |
URL | http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IMTC.2002.1006937 |
DOI | 10.1109/IMTC.2002.1006937 |