Electrostatic instability of micro-plates subjected to differential pressure: A semi-analytical approach

Electrostatic instability is one of the main features of many electrostatic MEMS and NEMS devices. In this paper, we investigate how the electrostatic instability of a plate-like electrode can be affected by a differential pressure. The results of this study indicate that the presence of differential pressure can have a significant influence...

On the mechanics and stability of micro-plates in electrically loaded MEMS devices

In the last decades, Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) have drawn immense attention due to their potential use in a wide variety of modern applications, including micro-mechanical sensors and actuators. MEMS are devices combining mechanical and electrical components between 1 and 100 micrometers, all integrated into a single chip. The...

Bi-stability of micro-plates: A sensitive mechanism for differential pressure measurements

The electrostatic instability (pull-in) of a flat electrode in a parallel plate capacitor has been shown to be highly sensitive to external mechanical loads such as pressure. In this paper, we substantiate the possibility of prompting additional unstable configurations in such a system, with a remarkable sensitivity to the applied pressure....

Effect of pressure on nonlinear dynamics and instability of electrically actuated circular micro-plates

Characterization of nonlinear behavior of micro-mechanical components in MEMS applications plays an important role in their design process. In this paper, nonlinear dynamics, stability and pull-in mechanisms of an electrically actuated circular micro-plate subjected to a differential pressure are studied. For this purpose, a reduced-order...

Experimental characterization of graphene by electrostatic resonance frequency tuning

In the last decade, graphene membranes have drawn tremendous attention due to their potential application in Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems. In this paper, we show that the frequency response curves of graphene resonators are powerful tools for their dynamic characterization and for extracting their equivalent Young's modulus. For this purpose,...