Control of Bouncing in MEMS Switches Using Double Electrodes

Abstract

This paper presents a novel way of controlling the bouncing phenomenon commonly present in the Radio Frequency Microelectromechanical Systems (RF MEMS) switches using a double-electrode configuration. The paper discusses modeling bouncing using both lumped parameter and beam models. The simulations of bouncing and its control are discussed. Comparison between the new proposed method and other available control techniques is also made. The Galerkin method is applied on the beam model accounting for the nonlinear electrostatic force, squeeze film damping, and surface contact effect. The results indicate that it is possible to reduce bouncing and hence beam degradation, by the use of double electrodes.

Micromechanical vibro-impact systems: a review

“…Similar results were also found in [155,159,161,163,193] and [234]. On the other hand, to mitigate bouncing phenomena [39,117,164], employed the soft-landing waveform optimization technique, which tries to lower the impact velocity by leveraging pull-in phenomena and minimizing switch bounces.…”

“…Distributed-parameter approach is commonly used to analyze MEMS vibro-impact systems that maintains the continuous nature of the structure and represents the response in terms of continuous variables. Based on this approach, MEMS vibro-impact systems are usually modeled as a timevarying, spatially distributed partial differential equation (PDE) coupled with the nonlinear terms and most of them are based on the Euler-Bernoulli theory [18,37,115,117,141,148,149,160,163]. A widely used method to treat these PDEs is to reduce them to tractable ordinary differential equations (ODEs) through modal analysis [18,115,117,141,163], resulting in a lumped reduced-order model.…”

“…Based on this approach, MEMS vibro-impact systems are usually modeled as a timevarying, spatially distributed partial differential equation (PDE) coupled with the nonlinear terms and most of them are based on the Euler-Bernoulli theory [18,37,115,117,141,148,149,160,163]. A widely used method to treat these PDEs is to reduce them to tractable ordinary differential equations (ODEs) through modal analysis [18,115,117,141,163], resulting in a lumped reduced-order model. Modal analysis considers the problem in modal space by projecting a continuous structure governed by a PDE with infinite DOFs into a discrete, 'infinite' set of modal equations.…”

“…It is common to approximate MEMS vibro-impact systems using the Galerkin method with a finite basic set of eigenmodes (i.e., one to four). The Galerkin method could be applied here due to the relatively simple structures and well determined free-vibration mode shapes of the MEMS devices [18,115,117,141,163]. For complex structures, it can be done with the help of the finite-element method (FEM).…”