A finite element technique for accurate determination of interfacial adhesion force in MEMS using electrostatic actuation

Abstract

This paper reports on accurate analysis of adhesion force between polysilicon–polysilicon surfaces in micro-/nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS). The measurement is carried out using double-clamped beams. Electrostatic actuation and structural restoring force are exploited to respectively initiate and terminate the contact between the two surfaces under investigation. The adhesion force is obtained by balancing the electrostatic and mechanical forces acting on the beam just before the separation of the two surfaces. Different finite element models are developed to simulate the coupled-field multiphysics problem. The effects of fringing field in the electrostatic domain and geometric nonlinearity and residual stress in the structural domain are taken into consideration. Moreover, the beam stiffness is directly obtained for the case of combined loading (electrostatic and adhesion). Therefore, the overall electrostatic and structural forces used to extract the actual adhesion force from measured data are determined with high accuracy leading to accurate values for the adhesion force. The finite element simulations presented in this paper are not limited to adhesion force measurement and can be used to design or characterize electrostatically actuated devices such as MEM tunable capacitors and micromirrors, RF switches and M/NEM relays.