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Low-voltage closed loop MEMS actuators

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Abstract

An efficient electrostatic resonator is designed by adding a low voltage controller to an electrostatic actuator. The closed loop actuator shows stable, and bi-sable behaviors with bounded chaotic oscillations as large as 117% of the capacitor gap. The controller voltage is decreased from a previously designed resonator to less than 9 V thereby reducing the load on the controller circuit components. Bifurcation diagrams are obtained showing the frequency and magnitude of AC voltage required for chaotic oscillations to develop. The information entropy, a measure of chaotic characteristic, is calculated for the micro-resonator and is found to be 0.732.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toronto, 5 King’s College Rd., Toronto, ON, M5S 3G8, Canada

    Shahrzad Towfighian

  2. University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1

    Glenn R. Heppler & Eihab M. Abdel-Rahaman

Authors
  1. Shahrzad Towfighian
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  2. Glenn R. Heppler
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  3. Eihab M. Abdel-Rahaman
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Correspondence to Shahrzad Towfighian.

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Towfighian, S., Heppler, G.R. & Abdel-Rahaman, E.M. Low-voltage closed loop MEMS actuators. Nonlinear Dyn 69, 565–575 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-011-0287-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-011-0287-9

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