A circular electrostatic zipping actuator for the application of a MEMS tunable capacitor

Micromechanical circuits such as MEMS switches, tunable capacitors (varactors) or resonators in general have lower loss and consume less power than their CMOS counterparts and have seen an increase of applications in high-value communication systems as well as low-cost commercial communication networks. Significant advances have been made in the areas of MEMS switches. However, MEMS resonators that operate in GHz range, have high quality factor and are highly tunable are still under active pursue. In this thesis, we study the design of a tunable capacitor that can be integrated with a resonant cavity to form a tunable electromagnetic cavity resonator. The design, fabrication, modeling and testing of a proof-of-concept MEMS tunable capacitor are presented. The tunable capacitor consists of a circular fulcrum that acts as a pivot for a thin silicon plate. The outer plate is an electrostatic, circular zipping actuator that bends the center plate through the fulcrum. By doing so, it opens the gap of the capacitor, which is formed by two smooth surfaces, one being the center plate, that are initially separated by a dielectric layer. The design is enabled mainly by the deep reactive ion etching and anodic bonding microfabrication techniques.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Yang, Xue'en, 1975-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alexander H. Slocum.

• 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/1721.1/35617

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35617