Electrostatic actuation of motion is commonly used in resonant MEMS. Drive signal feed-through is undesirable as it masks the detection signal. This paper reports analysis and demonstration of a resonant motion excitation scheme, which uses a combination of a DC bias with a sinusoidal AC voltage, frequency of which is twice of the mechanical resonant frequency. This configuration is experimenta...

Diffraction gratings are among the most commonly used optical elements in applications ranging from spectroscopy and metrology to lasers. Numerous methods have been adopted for the fabrication of gratings, including microelectromechanical system (MEMS) fabrication which is by now mature and presents opportunities for tunable gratings through inclusion of an actuation mechanism. We have designed...

This paper describes the development of a micro media actuator (MMA) for probe-based mass data storage. The process is based on dry etching and incorporates a thinned silicon media sled to increase the frequency response of the system. The suspended micro-mechanical media sled moves in x-y (±50 μm) using electrostatic actuation. The system design specification requires actuation of an 8x8 mm ma...

This paper describes a MEMS RF switch designed and developed specifically for space communication systems, with a novel geometry and operating mode that overcome the drawbacks of previous devices. To avoid the need for high voltage control, the switch uses electro-thermal rather than electrostatic operation; although this requires higher power consumption during switching, a latching configurat...

This paper presents an innovative design of a low loss RF MEMS switch, with low actuation voltage (VT) & improved mechanical stability. The switch is less sensitive to the stiction and has less damping effect which ultimately increases the reliability of the switch. The specialty of this switch is that its beam is made up of two materials, one gives mechanical stability and other provides the c...

Actuation systems for few cubic millimeter sized mobile autonomous robots are subject to severe constraints in terms of e.g. size, fabrication or power consumption. Also the onboard electronics has limited performance due to both size and power restrictions, so actuation voltages, currents and frequency should be minimized. Various principles of electrical to mechanical energy conversion will b...

Catalytic engines can use hydrogen peroxide as a chemical fuel in order to drive motion at the microscale. The chemo-mechanical actuation is a complex mechanism based on the interrelation between catalytic reactions and electro-hydrodynamics phenomena. We studied catalytic micropumps using fluorescence confocal microscopy to image the concentration of protons in the liquid. In addition, we meas...

The authors describe a method for biomolecular force clamp measurements using atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilevers and micromachined membrane-based electrostatic actuators. The actuators comprise of Parylene membranes with embedded side actuation electrodes and are fabricated on a silicon substrate. The devices have a displacement range of 1.8 μm with 200 V actuation voltage, and displacem...

We report an actuation/detection scheme with a top-down nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) for frequency shift based sensing applications with outstanding performance. It relies on electrostatic actuation and piezoresistive nanowire gauges for in-plane motion transduction. The process fabrication is fully CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) compatible. The results show a very large ...

This paper presents the theoretical design and analysis of a tunable Fabry–Perot resonant microcavity filter realized by movable-waveguide-based integrated optical MEMS technology in InP. Wide-bandwidth, high-reflectivity horizontal InP/air-gap distributed bragg reflector (DBR) mirrors monolithically integrated with the waveguides have been proposed. The filter can be tuned by moving one of the...