Stability of Electrostatic Actuation of MEMS

Abstract

The increased electrostatic stability of MEMS sensors enables new application areas for the sensors, and decreases the manufacturing costs of existing products. Especially in the applications where the MEMS component is operated under bias voltage close to the pull-in point, the undesired instability phenomenon becomes a major source of inaccuracy. We demonstrate that biasing the sensor to the pull-in point using AC voltage is significantly more stable than the conventionally used DC voltage biasing.