Title: A material approach for the computation of electrostatic forces in MEMS structures

Authors: Kaiping Zeng

Addresses: Integrated Circuits and Systems Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Darmstadt University of Technology, Hochschulstrasse 10, Darmstadt D-64289, Germany

Abstract: Amaterial formulation is in this paper proposed for the description of the electric energy within electrostatically actuated MEMS, yielding an approach that is applicable to the computation of electrostatic forces. Using the approach presented instead of the conventional spatial approach, the heavy task of the geometry update of the structure under consideration is avoided. The solution obtained from the material approach is compared to that of the spatial one through a fixed-free beam structure.

Keywords: MEMS structures; electrostatic forces; material approach; spatial method; nanoscale technology; nanotechnology; microelectromechanical systems.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCSE.2006.012776

International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering, 2006 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.221 - 227

Published online: 14 Mar 2007 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article