Silicon-on-insulator out-of-plane electrostatic actuator with in situ capacitive position sensing

Jiankun Wang; Zhenchuan Yang; Guizhen Yan

doi:10.1117/1.JMM.11.3.033006

19 July 2012 Silicon-on-insulator out-of-plane electrostatic actuator with in situ capacitive position sensing

Jiankun Wang, Zhenchuan Yang, Guizhen Yan

Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS, Vol. 11, Issue 3, 033006 (July 2012). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMM.11.3.033006

Abstract

An out-of-plane electrostatic comb actuator with in situ capacitive position sensing is presented. Asymmetrical vertical combs are used as the comb drives and in differential out-of-plane position sensing capacitors. A spring which can realize out-of-plane translational displacement of high-aspect-ratio structures was designed and analyzed both analytically and numerically. A robust silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process was proposed and verified to successfully fabricate the actuator with asymmetrical combs. The in situ capacitive position sensing capability was realized by the integrated out-of-plane sensing capacitors, and calibrated with the gravity as an acceleration reference. Treated as an accelerometer, the scale factor and nonlinearity of the actuator are evaluated to be 93.4 mV/g and 0.03%, respectively, with the input range of ±1 g. The tested static out-of-plane displacement ranges from -0.88 to 1.39 μm when the actuator is placed horizontally, and -1.16 to 1.25 μm when placed vertically, both with the supply voltage of 12 volts.

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Jiankun Wang, Zhenchuan Yang, and Guizhen Yan "Silicon-on-insulator out-of-plane electrostatic actuator with in situ capacitive position sensing," Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS 11(3), 033006 (19 July 2012). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMM.11.3.033006

Published: 19 July 2012

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