Abstract
Damping forces play an important role in capacitive MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) behavior, and typical damper design (parallel-plates) cannot address the design conflict between increase in electrical capacitance and damping reduction. Squeeze-film damping in in-plane parallel-plate MEMS is discussed here and a novel damper geometry for gap-varying parallel-plates is introduced and used to increase the capacitance/damping ratio. The new geometry is compared with a typical parallel-plate design for an silicon-on-insulator process (25 µm thick) and experimental data shows an approximate 25% to 50% reduction for the damping coefficient in structures with 500 µm long dampers (for a gap variation between 0.75 and 3.75 µm), in agreement with computational fluid dynamics simulations, without significantly affecting the capacitance value (∼4% reduction). Preliminary simulations to study the role of the different geometric parameters involved in the improved geometry are also performed and reveal that the channel width is the most critical value for effective damping reduction.
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