Design principles for six degrees-of-freedom MEMS-based precision manipulators

In the future, the precision manipulation of small objects will become more and more important for appliances such as data storage, micro assembly, sample manipulation in microscopes, cell manipulation, and manipulation of beam paths by micro mirrors. At the same time, there is a drive towards miniaturized systems.\ud Therefore, Micro ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS), a fabrication technique enabling micron sized features, has been researched for precision manipulation. MEMS devices comprise micro sensors, actuators, mechanisms, optics and fluidic systems. They have the ability to integrate several functions in a small package. MEMS can be commercially attractive by providing cost reduction or enabling new functionality with respect to macro systems. Combining design principles, a mature design philosophy for creating precision machines, and MEMS fabrication, a\ud technology for miniaturization, could lead to micro systems with deterministic behavior and accurate positioning capability. However, in MEMS design trade-offs\ud need to be made between fabrication complexity and design principle requirements.\ud Therefore, the goal of this research has been twofold:\ud 1. Design and manufacture a 6 Degrees-of-Freedom (DOFs) MEMS-based manipulator with nanometer resolution positioning.\ud 2. Derive principle solutions for the synthesis of exact kinematic constraint design and MEMS fabrication technology for multi DOFs precision manipulation in the\ud micro domain

Tunable MEMS VCSEL on Silicon substrate

We present design, fabrication and characterization of a MEMS VCSEL which utilizes a silicon-on-insulator wafer for the microelectromechanical system and encapsulates the MEMS by direct InP wafer bonding, which improves the protection and control of the tuning element. This procedure enables a more robust fabrication, a larger free spectral range and facilitates bidirectional tuning of the MEMS element. The MEMS VCSEL device uses a high contrast grating mirror on a MEMS stage as the bottom mirror, a wafer bonded InP with quantum wells for amplification and a deposited dielectric DBR as the top mirror. A 40 nm tuning range and a mechanical resonance frequency in excess of 2 MHz are demonstrated

A six degrees of freedom MEMS manipulator

This thesis reports about a six degrees of freedom (DOF) precision manipulator in MEMS, concerning concept generation for the manipulator followed by design and fabrication (of parts) of the proposed manipulation concept in MEMS. Researching the abilities of 6 DOF precision manipulation in MEMS is part of the Multi Axes Micro Stage (MAMS) project in which the disciplines of precision engineering, control engineering and micro mechanical engineering are represented

6-DoFs MEMS-based precision manipulators

Combining Design Principles, a mature design philosophy for creating precision machines, and MEMS fabrication, a technology for miniaturization, could lead to micro systems with deterministic behavior and accurate positioning capability. However, in MEMS design tradeoffs need to be made between fabrication complexity and design principle requirements. Here a micro-mechatronic design of a Stewart Platform, a six Degrees-of-Freedom MEMSbased Precision Manipulator, is presented

MEMS Electrostatically Actuated Resonator

A MEMS electrostatically actuated resonator with fixed-fixed and fixed-free cantilever beams is designed, simulated, fabricated, and tested. The fabrication of the MEMS resonators uses RIT’s MEMS fabrication 2016 process flow which is a surface micromachining process. The released fixed-free devices tested showed an increasing change in capacitance with an increasing actuation voltage. Inspection of the released fixed-fixed devices has a compressive stress in the second polysilicon film that causes the cantilever beam to bend above the actuation and sensing pads. Testing for resonance has not been successful. Some new considerations for the MEMS fabrication process and design are discussed

A Comparative Study Between a Micromechanical Cantilever Resonator and MEMS-based Passives for Band-pass Filtering Application

Over the past few years, significant growth has been observed in using MEMS based passive components in the RF microelectronics domain, especially in transceiver components. This is due to some excellent properties of the MEMS devices like low loss, excellent isolation etc. in the microwave frequency domain where the on-chip passives normally tend to become leakier and degrades the transceiver performance. This paper presents a comparative analysis between MEMS-resonator based and MEMS-passives based band-pass filter configurations for RF applications, along with their design, simulation, fabrication and characterization. The filters were designed to have a center frequency of 455 kHz, meant for use as the intermediate frequency (IF) filter in superheterodyne receivers. The filter structures have been fabricated in PolyMUMPs process, a three-polysilicon layer surface micromachining process.Comment: 6 pages, 15 figure

Mechanical de-tethering technique for Silicon MEMS etched with DRIE process.

International audienceGetting Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) out of a wafer after fabrication processes is of great interest in testing, packaging or simply using these devices. Actual solutions require special machines like wafer dicing machines, increasing time and cost of de-tethering MEMS. This article deals with a new solution for manufacturing mechanical de-tetherable silicon MEMS. The presented solution could be done with DRIE process, already used in silicon MEMS fabrication, without additional time or cost. We are proposing a new way to create a notch on tethers linking both wafer and millimetric MEMS, especially designed to break with a specified mechanical force. A theoretical silicon fracture study, the experimental results and dimensional rules to design the tethers are presented in this article. This new technique is particularly useful for microscopic MEMS parts, and will find applications in the field of the MEMS components micro-assembly

An easy to control all-metal in-line-series ohmic RF MEMS switch

Copyright @ 2010 Springer-VerlagThe analysis, design and simulation of a novel easy to control all-metal in-line-series ohmic RF MEMS switch is presented, for applications where the operating frequency ranges from DC to 4 GHz. The proposed switch, due to its unique shape and size, assures high isolation and great linearity fulfilling the necessary requirements as concerns loss, power handling and power consumption. Simplicity has been set as the key success factor implying robustness and high fabrication yield. On the other hand, the specially designed cantilever-shape (hammerhead) allows distributed actuation force ensuring high controllability as well as reliability making the presented RF MEMS switch one of its kind

Programmable latching probe microstructures for wafer testing applications

The objective of this thesis is to design a programmable wafer testing array on a single chip based on micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) and VLSI. The wafer-scale integration in this thesis is a programmable array of test probes that are used for engineering test of VLSI and ULSI silicon integrated circuits at the wafer level. This consists of two subsystems (1) the VLSI address circuits used for addressing and controlling the MEMS on the chip and (2) the latching probe MEMS microstructure array that actuates into position for testing VLSI wafers. Each of the subsystems have been designed, analyzed and simulated separately. These structures were then integrated into a demonstration 4x4 array forming a programmable probe card. A 3-micrometer critical dimension is used for both the VLSI CMOS and the MEMS physical design layouts. The fabrication technique for the MEMS microstructure is detailed. A standard 12-mask CMOS technology is used for the fabrication of the address circuits