The determination of functional parameters of miniaturized electromechanical components, e.g. micro relays, is a crucial task in production process. For actuators like relays the positions of moving parts and the forces during travel and at the end positions, respectively, are very important quantities. Today, a direct method using a mechanical sensing device is widely used to determine these q...

Using the combinatorial material synthesis approach, materials libraries can be produced in one experiment that contain up to several thousand samples on a single substrate. In order to identify optimized materials in an efficient way using screening methods, adequate automated material characterization tools have to be designed and applied. Microsystems (micro-electromechanical systems: MEMS) ...

Micromachining arbitrary 3D silicon structures for micro-electromechanical systems can be accomplished using gray-scale lithography along with dry anisotropic etching. In this study, we have investigated the use of deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) and the tailoring of etch selectivity for precise fabrication. Silicon loading, the introduction of an O2 step, wafer electrode power, and wafer temp...

This paper reports on the state-of-the-art of technologies for the design and fabrication of MEMS micro-mirrors. We discuss the major design issues, considerations, calculations and restrictions of micro mirrors. The materials employed for the reflective surfaces are described along with their properties. The materials used for the static and dynamic MEMS micro structures as well as the differe...

Due to the large coupling between their electrical and mechanical properties, ferroelectric ceramics are increasingly being implemented in novel devices. This review reports on recent advances in the development of predictive constitutive models for the coupled and non-linear electromechanical behavior of ferroelectrics. Such constitutive models are required to analyze the performance of ferroe...

Recent development in nanoand biotechnology has opened a new field of microand nanofluidics. Many MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical-systems) and NEMS ( nano-electromechanical-systems ) are based on the fluid motion. Additionally, the analysis of biological samples, drug design and nanomedicine are connected to nanoliter fluid flow. The challenge for understanding such small systems lies in the dif...

A design of a micro latching fastener – a micro “mouse trap” – is presented, which has self-closing compliant latches that clamp a free planar part inserted between them. The selfclosing of the latches is induced by the insertion of the part which releases the potential energy stored in the “cocked” state of the device, in the manner of a mouse trap. The closed latch can re-open by cocking the ...

Continuous growth in demand for optical network capacity and the sudden maturation of WDM technologies have fueled the development of long-haul optical network systems that transport tens to hundreds of wavelengths per fiber, with each wavelength modulated at 10 Gb/s or more. Micro-electromechanical systems devices are recognized to be the enabling technologies to build the next-generation cost...

We develop a method for systematically constructing Lagrangian functions for dissipative mechanical, electrical, and electromechanical systems. We derive the equations of motion for some typical electromechanical systems using deterministic principles that are strictly variational. We do not use any ad hoc features that are added on after the analysis has been completed, such as the Rayleigh di...

Fabrication of high quality nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS) is nowadays extremely efficient. These NEMS will be used as sensors and actuators in integrated systems. Their use, however, raises questions about their interface (actuation, detection, read out) with external detection and control systems. Their operation implies many fundamental questions related to single particle effects suc...