Electrostatic zipping actuators and their applications to MEMS

Electrostatic actuation is the most common and well-developed method of generating motion on the micro scale. To overcome the challenge of providing both high force and large displacement, electrostatic zipping actuators have been developed and applied to various devices. As device thicknesses increase, however, conventional laterally- moving zipping actuators become less practical due to their high pull-in voltages caused by their minimum achievable electrode gaps. This thesis presents a fundamental improvement of the laterally-moving electrostatic zipping actuator. Its major contributions are: 1) a compliant starting zone is introduced into the fixed electrode to significantly reduce the pull-in voltage of the zipping electrode; 2) numerical and analytical methods are developed to solve general zipping actuator problems; 3) optimization is performed to minimize the effort required to actuate the zipping electrode and its load; and 4) the improved zipping actuators are designed into a relay to illustrate their use and performance. To design a cross-bar micro relay, two zipping actuators are combined with a curved bistable switch beam and two contacts.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Li, Jian, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alexander H. Slocum and Jeffrey H. Lang.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33678

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33678