Influence of Micro-Cantilever Geometry and Gap on Pull-in Voltage

Abstract

In this paper, we study the behaviour of a microcantilever beam under electrostatic actuation using finite difference method. This problem has a lot of applications in MEMS based devices like accelerometers, switches and others. In this paper, we formulated the problem of a cantilever beam with proof mass at its end and carried out the finite difference solution. we studied the effects of length, width, and the gap size on the pull-in voltage using data that are available in the literature. Also, the stability limit is compared with the single degree of freedom commonly used in the earlier literature as an approximation to calculate the pull-in voltage.