Tristable capacitive microcantilever switches: Measurements and simulations

Abstract

Multistability is a ubiquitous utilization of nonlinear behavior; light switches, retractable pens, and ratchets are just a few everyday examples. Today, micro- and nanomechanical devices exploit mechanical multistability in circuitry elements to benefit electrical signal manipulation. Multistability at these small scales arises from a competition of elastic, surface, and electrostatic forces. For capacitive microcantilever switches, bistable operation is already commonplace, but inherent tristability expands opportunities for switching, memory, and mechanism applications. Herein, tristability is demonstrated experimentally for 20 capacitive microcantilever switches, while measurement-enhanced simulations quantitatively capture switching thresholds. This work goes beyond prior literature theoretically predicting the tristability in switches to experimentally characterize this behavior in real microcantilever devices, and also to present ways to better validate theoretical predictions with experimental results.