Electrostatic actuated mems for precision AC voltage references

The purpose of this paper is to present results on the design of electrostatic actuated micro- electromechanical systems (MEMS) aiming at developing AC voltage references through mechanical-electrical transduction for electrical metrology and more generally for miniaturized instrumentation. Several test MEMS architectures (targeted AC voltages from 10 V up to 100 V) for the vertical motion have been designed and are under fabrication by an epitaxial silicon on insulator (SOI) surface micromachining process with the aim to investigate the potentialities of the different structures with respect to the geometrical dispersion, the strain sensitivity and the electrical stability.