Micro-electro-mechanical digital-to-analog converter based on a novel bimorph thermal actuator

Author

Liu, Qingquan ; Huang, Qing-An

Author_Institution

Microelectron. Center, Southeast Univ., Nanjing, China

Volume

2

fYear

2002

fDate

2002

Firstpage

1036

Abstract

A novel micro-electro-mechanical digital-to-analog converter based on a bimorph thermal actuator (bimorph MEMDAC) is proposed in the paper. Driven by four-bit digital voltage of 5 V, it can produce out-of-plane deflection. Compared to the conventional bimorph thermal actuators driven by analog voltages, it could be controlled precisely by digital voltages. Finite element analysis, in which a three-layer model is used to improve the accuracy, shows that the maximum out-of-plane displacement and deflection angle is 22.1μm and 0.228rad, respectively. The nonlinear error of the preliminary design is 0.5μm. The error could be reduced to below 0.1μm by design modifications.

Keywords

digital-analogue conversion; elemental semiconductors; finite element analysis; microactuators; silicon; 22.1 micron; 5 V; Si; bimorph thermal actuator; deflection angle; design modifications; digital-to-analog converter; finite element analysis; micro-electro-mechanical device; nonlinear error; out-of-plane deflection; out-of-plane displacement; three-layer model; Actuators; Digital-analog conversion; Electronic circuits; Finite element methods; Heating; Micromechanical devices; Resistors; Silicon; Thermal resistance; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Sensors, 2002. Proceedings of IEEE

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7454-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSENS.2002.1037255

Filename

1037255