A Two-Terminal Bistable Electrothermally Actuated Microswitch

Yadav, Dhananjay and Murthy, Nitish Satya and Palathingal, Safvan and Shekhar, Sudhanshu and Giridhar, M S and Ananthasuresh, G K (2019) A Two-Terminal Bistable Electrothermally Actuated Microswitch. In: JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, 28 (3). pp. 540-549.

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Abstract

An improved design of an electrothermally actuated two-terminal bistable microswitch is the focus of this paper. The proposed design has bimodal bistability which is obtained by using a pair of arches, a V-beam electrothermal actuator, and a novel initially retracting actuator. All these elements are monolithically integrated in a single planar releasable layer. The salient feature of the design is the usage of only a single pair of electrodes to switch between ON and OFF states, even though there are two actuators. In order to reduce the stress, the two actuators are mechanically decoupled but are electrically coupled to satisfy the two-terminal actuation. The switch design is experimentally verified by realizing on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer using a single-layer micro-fabrication technique. An actuation voltage of 11.8 V with 200-ms pulse-width, drives the switch from OFF to ON state and a 50-ms pulse of the same voltage across the same terminals, brings it back.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS
Publisher:	IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
Additional Information:	copyright for this article is belongs to IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
Keywords:	Bistable compliant mechanism; initially-retracting actuator; microswitch; two-terminal actuation
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Mechanical Engineering
Date Deposited:	30 Jul 2019 07:09
Last Modified:	30 Jul 2019 07:09
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/63143

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