Tolerance analysis for comb-drive actuator using DRIE fabrication

Li, J.; Liu, A.Q.; Zhang, Q.X.

doi:10.1016/j.sna.2005.08.002

Cited by 41 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…One of the special features of the fabrication is that a dry release approach is adopted rather than the wet etching to release the movable structures. This is to avoid the stiction problem, which happens easily due to the capillary forces that occur during the rinsing and drying of wet release [21], [22], [28], [29]. The basic idea of dry release approach is to first obtain deep trenches by vertical anisotropic etching as usual, but then to have the lateral etching process by the use of the notching effect when the remained silicon structure is close to the buried layer while the vertical etched beam is protected by thin silicon dioxide layer.…”

Section: Device Fabrication and Experiemntal Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By well controlling the process parameters, the movable structures can be released without significant sacrifice of the depth of the silicon structure. The details of the process can be found in [21], [22]. Compared with the wet etching method that removes the buffer oxide, the dry release approach removes the bottom of the silicon structural layer to release the moving parts and thus does not need any wet process.…”

Section: Device Fabrication and Experiemntal Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is especially useful for the Littman configuration, which commonly has the pivot arm (i.e., the line from the pivot to the grating) cutting through the gain chip or the external cavity [5], [10], [15], [19], [20]. However, the position of the virtual pivot is determined by the combination of several parameters, so that it is sensitive to the condition changes such as fabrication error, temperature change, and residual stress [10], [21], [22]. For example, a small deviation of fabricated beam width/height could shift the pivot position significantly and actually make the whole design fail.…”

Section: B Pivot Requirements For Mems Tunable Lasersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in real cases the beam width and depth could be changed nonuniformly, especially for the deep-etched MEMS devices. This is because of the presence of undercut (in the width direction) and notching effect (in the depth direction) in the deep reactive ion etching process, both are dependent on the trench width/shape surrounding the beam [21], [22]. In the real pivot formed by the double-clamped beam, the trench and other structures are commonly symmetric to the beam midpoint, and thus the change of beam width/depth is also symmetric.…”

Section: ) Pivot Position and Rotation Angle Under Pure Torquementioning

confidence: 99%

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A Real Pivot Structure for MEMS Tunable Lasers

Zhang

Liu

et al. 2007

J. Microelectromech. Syst.

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This paper presents the design of a real pivot formed by a double-clamped beam for the rotational tuning structures in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) tunable lasers. Micromechanical properties such as beam deformation, pivot position and pivot shift are investigated and compared with the virtual pivot formed by a cantilever beam. It is shown that the real pivot has negligible shift when subjected to load and fabrication error owing to its feature of structural symmetry, while the virtual pivot suffers from significant pivot shift, which would severely limit the wavelength tuning range. The two pivot designs are implemented into MEMS tuning structures that are fabricated by deep etching and released using a dry release approach. The real pivot measures a depth variation of 16% over the double-clamped beam but maintains the symmetry to the midpoint, and is still able to produce a rotation angle of 4.7 . In contrast, the virtual pivot has a depth reduction of 4% over the cantilever beam, but achieves only a 2.4 rotation due to the pull-in problem originated from the severe pivot shift. The real pivot design is more suitable for the MEMS tunable lasers as it is simple, symmetric, robust, and suitable for single-chip integration.[2006-0112]

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Section: Device Fabrication and Experiemntal Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Device Fabrication and Experiemntal Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: B Pivot Requirements For Mems Tunable Lasersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ) Pivot Position and Rotation Angle Under Pure Torquementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A Real Pivot Structure for MEMS Tunable Lasers

Zhang

Liu

et al. 2007

J. Microelectromech. Syst.

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show abstract

“…The defects, therefore, are the one and only factor left to giving rise to the sensitivity jump. The defects in micro structures are mainly caused by the micro manufacturing process, for example, the dry/wetetching induces sidewall roughness or angled grooves, the over-etching results in concave defects and under-etching leads to convex defects [20]- [24]. Both the roughness and concaves impact the stiffness of micro beams only in the form of nonlinearity, while the convex on beam will change the effective stiffness by stopping the movement of a certain segment of beam when the deformation forms a contact between two adjacent parts.…”

Section: Analysis and Derivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitivity Jump of Micro Accelerometer Induced by Micro-fabrication Defects of Micro Folded Beams

Zhou

Chen

et al. 2016

Measurement Science Review

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The abnormal phenomenon occurring in sensor calibration is an obstacle to product development but a useful guideline to product improvement. The sensitivity jump of micro accelerometers in the calibrating process is recognized as an important abnormal behavior and investigated in this paper. The characteristics of jumping output in the centrifuge test are theoretically and experimentally analyzed and their underlying mechanism is found to be related to the varied stiffness of supporting beam induced by the convex defect on it. The convex defect is normally formed by the lithography deviation and/or etching error and can result in a jumping stiffness of folded microbeams and further influence the sensitivity when a part of the bending beams is stopped from moving by two surfaces contacting. The jumping level depends on the location of convex and has nothing to do with the contacting properties of beam and defects. Then the location of defect is predicted by theoretical model and simulation and verified by the observation of micro structures under microscopy.The results indicate that the tested micro accelerometer has its defect on the beam with a distance of about 290μm from the border of proof mass block.

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A Micromachined Reconfigurable Metamaterial via Reconfiguration of Asymmetric Split‐Ring Resonators

Liu

Zhu

et al. 2011

Adv Funct Materials

181

120

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A micromachined reconfigurable metamaterial is presented, whose unit cell consists of a pair of asymmetric split‐ring resonators (ASRRs); one is fixed to the substrate while the other is patterned on a movable frame. The reconfigurable metamaterial and the supporting structures (e.g., microactuators, anchors, supporting frames, etc.) are fabricated on a silicon‐on‐insulator wafer using deep reactive‐ion etching (DRIE). By adjusting the distance between the two ASRRs, the strength of dipole–dipole coupling can be tuned continuously using the micromachined actuators and this enables tailoring of the electromagnetic response. The reconfiguration of unit cells endows the micromachined reconfigurable metamaterials with unique merits such as electromagnetic response under normal incidence and wide tuning of resonant frequency (measured as 31% and 22% for transverse electric polarization and transverse magnetic polarization, respectively). The reconfiguration could also allow switching between the polarization‐dependent and polarization‐independent states. With these features, the micromachined reconfigurable metamaterials may find potential applications in transformation optics devices, sensors, intelligent detectors, tunable frequency‐selective surfaces, and spectral filters.

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Tolerance analysis for comb-drive actuator using DRIE fabrication

Cited by 41 publications

References 14 publications

A Real Pivot Structure for MEMS Tunable Lasers

A Real Pivot Structure for MEMS Tunable Lasers

Sensitivity Jump of Micro Accelerometer Induced by Micro-fabrication Defects of Micro Folded Beams

A Micromachined Reconfigurable Metamaterial via Reconfiguration of Asymmetric Split‐Ring Resonators

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