Robust Control of an Electrostatic Microelectromechanical Actuator

A continuing trend these days is the use of micro-electro-mechanical actuators with electronic circuitry to fabricate MEMS devices such as micro-switches, hard disks, optical micro-mirrors ... One of the problems with the electrostatic MEMS actuator is that when an electrical voltage is applied to these devices, the micro-actuators undergo a residual vibration before reaching their permanent position. This paper addresses the control of an electrostatic microelectromechanical actuator to reduce the vibration effect on its performance. A feedback linearization controller, a static sliding mode controller and a dynamic sliding mode controller are designed for the microelectromechanical system. The stability of the closed loop system is proved. Simulation results indicate that the proposed control schemes work well.