Abstract
Electrostatically actuated microrelays have been fabricated. The structural material, copper, is electroformed onto patterned areas. The typical dimensions of a single-blade relay are 1.88mm×1mm×0.01 mm (length×width×thickness). Microrelays with connected sectioned blades have also been fabricated, which showed improvement in lowering contact resistance. It is believed that sectioned blades not rigidly connected together have better flexibility and more contact points. Fabricated relays are capable of carrying current loads of several amperes and are able to switch 1 A resistor loads. When switching off an inductive load, the energy stored in the motor coils will discharge through the relay gap and reduce the relay service life. Using a Zener diode as a discharge path for the inductive load increased the relay operation cycles. The time delay in making and breaking the contact is approximately 50 μs. To check the mechanical fatigue property, relays were used to switch a low load, 50 mA resistor load and were able to operate for more than 1.7×106 cycles without failure.
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