The design of released microstructures depends on accurate knowledge of residual stresses and associated elastic constants. The MIT-developed material test procedure, M-Test, uses the variation of pull-in voltage with beam length to extract residual stress and elastic modulus from in-situ test structures. This thesis reports a fully automated computer-microvision procedure that automatically de...

A previously proposed two-terminal carbon-nanotube-based device with closed-loop feedback is demonstrated through in situ scanning electron microscopy (SEM) experiments. The pull-in/pull-out tests were carried out using a multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) welded to a conductive probe attached to a nanomanipulator. The MWCNTs were cantilevered over a gold electrode and electrostatically actua...

Abstract — In CMOS circuit’s design, as the threshold voltage is reduced due to voltage scaling, it leads to increase in sub-threshold leakage current and hence static power dissipation. In this paper we propose a power reduction technique named transistor gating. In this technique two sleep transistors PMOS and NMOS are inserted in between the supply voltage and ground. A PMOS is inserted in b...

A novel high voltage (HV) modulator that offers a short fall time to minimize sputtering effects and allow more precise control of the incident ion fluence in plasma immersion ion implantation is described. The use of 36 insulated-gate bipolar transistors in the 30 kV hard-tube pulser reduces the HV fall time to 3.5 μs, compared to a fall time of 80 μs if a pull-down resister is used. The volta...

We study pull-in instabilities in a functionally graded microelectromechanical system (MEMS) due to the heat produced by the electric current. Material properties of two-phase MEMS are assumed to vary continuously in the thickness direction. It is shown that the pull-in voltage strongly depends upon the variation through the thickness of the volume fractions of the two constituents. It is proba...

We analyze pull-in instability of electrostatically actuated microelectromechanical systems, and study changes in pull-in parameters due to the Casimir effect. When the size of the device is reduced, the magnitude of the Casimir force is comparable with that of the Coulomb force and it significantly alters pull-in parameters. We model the deformable conductor as an elastic membrane and consider...