Section
Author's Guide | Reviewer's Guide

ST Journal of Research
MEMS

Vol. 3, No. 1, August 2006- Art. 5
 
Electrostatic analysis of a comb-finger actuator with Schwarz–Christoffel conformal mapping

MEMS details by
P. Bruschi, A. Nannini, F. Pieri, G. Raffa, University of Pisa, B. Vigna, S. Zerbini, STMicroelectronics

Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier, 2004 - Reprinted from Sensors and Actuators A 113 (2004) 106–117, doi:10.1016/j.sna.2004.02.038 http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/
journaldescription.cws_home/ 504103/description#description
 

Abstract
The design and the analysis of a comb-finger actuator require the evaluation of the coupling capacitances as well as the estimation of the electrostatic forces. Several approaches are possible: very rough approximations based on combinations of parallel plate capacitor elements, analytical or numericalSchwarz-Christoffel conformal mapping based techniques, numerical solutions of the electrostatic field equations. Powerful numerical approaches can be very accurate, but heavy and time-consuming, while simple approaches are very inaccurate. A partially analytical approximate method based on Schwarz-Christoffel conformal mapping is discussed.
The comparison with results from standard simulators and experimental measurements demonstrates that the studied procedure is fast and satisfactorily accurate.

 

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