Open Access

ARTICLE

Design and Fabrication of an Electrostatic Variable Gap Comb Drive in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems

Wenjing Ye¹, Subrata Mukherjee²

1 Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Mechanical Engineering, 281 Ferst Drive, SSTC #1, Room 209, Atlanta, GA 30332-0405
2 Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Kimball Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2000, 1(1), 111-120. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2000.001.111

Abstract

Polynomial driving-force comb drives are designed using numerical simulation. The electrode shapes are obtained using the indirect boundary element method. Variable gap comb drives that produce combinations of linear, quadratic, and cubic driving-force profiles are synthesized. This inverse problem is solved by an optimization procedure. Sensitivity analysis is carried out by the direct differentiation approach (DDA) in order to compute design sensitivity coefficients (DSCs) of force profiles with respect to parameters that define the shapes of the fingers of a comb drive. The DSCs are then used to drive iterative optimization procedures. Designs of variable gap comb drives with linear, quadratic and cubic driving force profiles are presented in this paper. Based on these designs, a comb drive which produces cubic polynomial driving force has been fabricated using the SCREAM I process. Test results show reasonable agreement between numerical simulations and experiments.

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Keywords

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