The closed-loop dynamics of a chaotic electrostatic microbeam actuator are presented. The actuator was found to be an asymmetric two-well potential system with two distinct chaotic attractors: one of which occurs predominantly in the lower well and a second that visits a lower-well orbit and a two-well orbit. Bifurcation diagrams obtained by sweeping the ac voltage amplitudes and frequency are ...

A resonant absorption cavity that couples long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) light into a movable plate has been demonstrated for thermal detectors, especially microbolometers. Each device is continuously tunable over 8.7-11.1 microm by using electrostatic actuation with voltages from 0 to 42 V. The width of the resonance is relatively broad, approximately 1.5 microm, to match the large widths of ...

This paper presents an effective method of linearizing the electrostatic transfer characteristics of micromachined two–dimensional (2-D) scanners. The orthogonal scan angles of surface micromachined polysilicon scanner are controlled by using quadrant electrodes for electrostatic actuation. By using a pair of differential voltages over a bias voltage, we could improve the distortion of projecte...

The design of RF MEMS switches involves several disciplines: mechanics, materials science and electrical engineering. While significant progress has been made in the RF design of the switches, mechanical and material studies are required for mass commercialization of reliable devices. Senturia and co-workers at MIT have presented a closed form solution to describe the electromechanical behavior...

Electrostatic actuation is a promising approach to compensate for misalignment of bonded, multi-layered microsystem devices. The present work discusses the performance of electrostatic actuators used for in-plane misalignment compensation in an atom chip comprising an optical cavity. Experimental investigation revealed that the central frame suspending the mirrors can be moved between 3-5 m in ...

Electrostatically-actuated resonant microbeam devices have garnered significant attention due to their geometric simplicity and broad applicability. Recently, some of this focus has turned to comb-driven microresonators with purely-parametric excitation, as such systems not only exhibit the inherent benefits of MEMS devices, but also a general improvement in sensitivity, stopband attenuation an...

MEMS electrostatic actuators suffer from pull-in instability, making them highly nonlinear and limiting their useful range of motion. This report resolves the performance-limiting issues gap-closing transducer by using an ultrathin dielectric layer (UDL) for actuation. The device has electromechanical coupling coefficient 4.26% average deflection sensitivity 119 nm/V over a 350 nm upto 3.3 V dc...

in this paper, the stability of a functionally graded magneto-electro-elastic (fg-mee) micro-beam under actuation of electrostatic pressure is studied. for this purpose euler-bernoulli beam theory and constitutive relations for magneto-electro-elastic (mee) materials have been used. we have supposed that material properties vary exponentially along the thickness direction of the micro-beam. gov...