The micromirror based on micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology is widely employed in different areas, such as scanning, imaging and optical switching. This paper studies the MEMS electromagnetic micromirror for scanning or imaging application. In these application scenarios, the micromirror is required to track the command sinusoidal signal, which can be converted to an output regu...

Variable preselection filters will be an important component of any software re-configurable radio design. To be of practical use, such a filter should occupy a minimum of board area in any transceiver layout. Slow-wave filters are introduced and their essential electrical characteristics and miniaturisation advantages are outlined. It is shown that this filter architecture is easily tuneable. ...

Ultra-Low-Power electronics can perform useful functions with power levels as low as 170 nW. This makes them amenable to powering from ambient sources such as vibration. In this case, they can become autonomous. Motivated by this application, this thesis provides the necessary tools to analyze, design and fabricate MEMS devices capable of electrostatic vibration-to-electric energy conversion at...

Bistable mechanical devices remain stable in two distinct positions without power input. They find application in valves, switches, closures, and clasps. Mechanically bistable behavior results from the storage and release of energy, typically in springs, with stable positions occurring at local minima of stored energy. Compliant mechanisms offer an elegant way to achieve this behavior by incorp...

In this paper, we present a study of tuneable equilateral triangular shaped spilt ring resonator (ETSRR). In this ETSRR we rotate the inner and outer rings by varying the position of the splits in rings. For this we used radio frequency microelectromechanical system (RF MEMS) switches. By making MEMS switches ON/OFF, the positions of splits in the rings were varied which can be considered as ro...

Film damping caused by microfluids has important effects on the dynamic characteristics of moving elements of microelectromechanical system devices. There are two kinds of film damping existing in microelectromechanical system devices, for instance, slide film damping and squeeze film damping. This article presents an overview on the recent research progress on the slide film damping in microel...

0026-2714/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. A doi:10.1016/j.microrel.2008.03.007 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (M In order to enable further developments in low cost wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for unobtrusive environmental monitoring, increased miniaturisation and integration of hardware is essential. This paper outlines the design concept and ...

RF MEMS are commonly known as electrostatic devices using high electric field for their actuation. They can be exposed to transient voltages in any environment, and are very sensitive. According to this point of view, it is necessary to understand and analyze the degradations and failure criteria that can make them useless or reduce their lifetime. This paper deals with the investigation of ESD...

In this review paper, several strategies for the implementation of reconfigurable split ring resonators (SRRs) based on RF-MEMS switches are presented. Essentially three types of RF-MEMS combined with split rings are considered: (i) bridge-type RF-MEMS on top of complementary split ring resonators CSRRs; (ii) cantilever-type RF-MEMS on top of SRRs; and (iii) cantilever-type RF-MEMS integrated w...

In this paper, four reconfigurable antennas are presented for multi-mode multi-band (MMMB) communication systems. Each antenna is able to reconfigure diverse operational frequency bands or beam directions depending on the states of embedded switches, which are implemented using pin diodes or RF-microelectro-mechanical system (RF-MEMS) switches.