MEMCAD capacitance calculations for mechanically deformed square diaphragm and beam microstructures

A Micro-ElectroMechanical Computer-Aided Design (MEMCAD) system is being developed to make it possible for microsensor designers to perform realistic simulations easily and quickly. Carefully selected commercial software packages have been linked with specialized databases and numerical programs to allow a designer to enter a three-dimensional microsensor geometry and quickly perform both mechanical and electrical analysis. The authors briefly describe the system and demonstrate its effectiveness by accurately calculating the capacitance versus pressure (or force) curve for a square diaphragm deformed by a differential pressure and for a rectangular beam deflected by a centrally applied force. The MEMCAD system has successfully implemented the following: querying a material property database for material property insertion, combining a 3-D solid model with displacement information from the finite element method, and interfacing the 3-D solid model format with a capacitance extraction program.<>