Sensors 2012, 12, 10881-10889; doi:10.

3390/s120810881
OPEN ACCESS

sensors
ISSN 1424-8220
www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
Article

A Comb-Drive Actuator Driven by Capacitively-Coupled-Power

Chao-Min Chang 1,2, Shao-Yu Wang 2, Rongshun Chen 1, J. Andrew Yeh 1 and Max T. Hou 2,*
1

Institute of NanoEngineering and MicroSystems, National Tsing Hua University, 101, Sec. 2,
Kuang-Fu Rd., Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan; E-Mails: [email protected] (C.-M.C.);
[email protected] (R.C.); [email protected] (J.A.Y.)
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National United University, 1, Lienda, Miaoli 36003,
Taiwan; E-Mail: [email protected]

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: [email protected];

Tel.: +886-37-382-296; Fax: +886-37-382-326.
Received: 20 June 2012; in revised form: 17 July 2012 / Accepted: 27 July 2012 /
Published: 7 August 2012

Abstract: This paper presents a new actuation mechanism to drive comb-drive actuators.
An asymmetric configuration of the finger overlap was used to generate capacitive
coupling for the actuation mechanism. When the driving voltages were applied on the
stators, a voltage would be induced at the rotor due to the capacitive coupling. Then, an
electrostatic force would be exerted onto the rotor due to the voltage differences between
the stators and the rotor. The actuators static displacement and resonant frequency were
theoretically analyzed. To verify the design, a comb-drive actuator with different initial
finger overlaps, i.e., 159.3 m and 48.9 m on each side, was fabricated and tested. The
results show that the actuator worked well using the proposed actuation mechanism. A
static displacement of 41.7 m and a resonant frequency of 577 Hz were achieved. Using
the actuation mechanism, no electrical connection is required between the rotor and the
outside power supply. This makes some comb-drive actuators containing heterogeneous
structures easy to design and actuate.
Keywords: actuation mechanism; capacitive coupling; electrostatic actuators

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1. Introduction
Electrostatic comb-drive actuators, which feature easy design, fabrication and implementation, are
an important type of actuators. They have been used in various application fields, such as optical
communication [1], biomedical engineering [2], wireless communication [3] and nanotechnology [4].
A longer traveling distance and a larger force output are two major concerns in developing comb-drive
actuators. In the last two plus decades, many research efforts were devoted to improve these two major
performance factors. These efforts can be grouped into four main directions: optimizing the finger
shape [5], modifying the spring shape [6], modifying the configuration of finger overlaps [7] and
creating new actuation methods [8].
Recently, besides the abovementioned directions, some low stiffness materials, such as
polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and SU-8, were used to construct the springs of comb-drive actuators to
obtain larger displacements [9,10]. Although the expected advantage of using low stiffness materials
(usually nonconductive) is achieved, the comb electrodes of the rotor are inevitably isolated. An extra
process of metal deposition is required to make the rotors finger electrodes electrically connected with
outside circuits once again. During operations, the thin metal layers likely have the risk of
delamination. The drawback of the bilayer springs makes the heterogeneous comb-drive actuators
unreliable. A suitable method should be developed to cancel the drawback.
Figure 1. Schematics of the comb-drive actuator with the actuation mechanism of
capacitively-coupling-power supply. Different initial overlaps, a1 and a2, form different
initial capacitances, C1 and C2. With the capacitance, Cr, which is formed between the rotor
and the handle layer, a capacitive circuit is observed. Applying voltages, V1 and V2, onto
the stators and grounding the handle layer, a voltage, Vr, will be induced at the rotor. As
long as V1 and V2 are not the same, the rotor will be moved by the net electrostatic force
generated by the comb electrodes.

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To eliminate the drawback, a capacitively-coupled-power driven comb-drive actuator (see Figure 1),
whose rotor requires no electrical interconnection, was proposed in this article. In the following
sections, the concept and design of the actuator will be explained and analyzed first. Then, the tests for
the fabricated actuators will be described, and the results will be discussed. Finally, the conclusions
will be made.
2. Capacitively-Coupled-Power Supply
One way to deliver power to the rotor without electrical interconnection is using a capacitive
coupling with the stators. Capacitively-coupled-power has been successfully used to drive microrobots
in the MEMS area [11]. To achieve this, we treated the stators and rotor of the comb-drive actuator as
a sequence of insulated electrodes, as shown in Figure 1. When different voltages are applied to the
stators, the rotor, the stators and the handle layer form a capacitive circuit. The potential (Vr) induced
on the rotor is determined by the voltages applied on the two stators using the following equation:

Vr =

V1C1 + V2C2
C1 + C2 + Cr

(1)

where V1 and V2 represent the applied voltages, and C1, C2 and Cr represent the capacitances. Although
Vr is floating, its value can be definitely determined by Equation (1), i.e., it is dependent on V1 and V2.
Possible variation of Vr may arise from the parasitic capacitance that exists in the device. This issue
can be removed by careful design to avoid any parasitic capacitance.
If the voltages V1 and V2 are different, the voltage differences between the rotor and the low-voltage
and high-voltage stators will be different. The voltage differences bring about different attraction
forces on two sides of the rotor. Then, the rotor will be moved to the position where the balance
between the mechanical and the electrostatic forces achieves.
By Equation (1), the influence of Cr can be observed. As Cr approaches zero, then:

Vr =

V1C1 + V2C2
C1 + C2

(2)

and Vr will be determined by V1, V2, C1 and C2. This can be achieved by removing the handle layer
under the movable part and isolating the rotors anchors from the stators anchors. Extra etching and
bonding processes are required to do so. In this case, the asymmetric configuration of finger overlap is
necessary to generate an initial difference between C1 and C2, and then an initial difference between
Vr V1 and Vr V2. Without the asymmetric configuration, the actuator will not be actuated. As
Cr approaches infinity, then:

Vr

V1C1 + V2C2
Cr

(3)

Namely, Vr will approach zero. This can be achieved by significantly increasing the areas of the
rotors anchors. It is easy to estimate Vr in this case. However, the excessive device area makes this
case not suitable to be implemented. In this article, Cr was neither close to zero nor infinity, hence
Equation (1) was used as the basic formula to obtain Vr.

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Note that when non-conductive materials are used to construct the springs of comb-drive actuators,
Cr is determined by the area of the movable structure. Cr will never approach infinity. Equation (1)
will also be used as the basic formula to obtain Vr.
3. Design and Analysis
3.1. Design
An asymmetric comb-drive actuator with different initial engagements, a1 and a2, between rotor and
stator fingers on each side was designed to achieve different initial C1 and C2, as shown in Figure 1.
Such an asymmetric configuration guarantees the actuation as Cr = 0, which can be achieved by
improving the device design and the fabrication process, as mentioned above.
3.2. Influence of Surrounding Electrostatic Field
In this paper, we assume the surrounding electrostatic field is comparatively small, thus its
influence was omitted. To ensure the validity of the assumption, the influence of surrounding
electrostatic field was evaluated by simulation analysis using CoventorWare software. Figure 2(a)
shows the model on which we performed the evaluation. A comb-drive actuator using the proposed
actuation mechanism was sandwiched between two imaginary parallel plates. A dc voltage was applied
onto the parallel plates to create a surrounding electrostatic field. Two factors, i.e., the distance
between the actuator and the upper or lower plate, gcp, and the applied voltage, Vsef, were taken into
consideration. Figure 2(b) shows the simulation results. The value of gcp and Vsef refer to actual
conditions of IC packaging and operation. Typically, gcp is larger than 500 m and Vsef is less than
25 volts. In this case, the actuator is surrounded by an electrostatic field of 50 kV/m, and then about
0.9% Vr difference will be induced. Hence, the influence of outside electrostatic field can be ignored.
Figure 2. (a) The testing model: a proposed actuator is sandwiched between a pair
of parallel plates. A voltage of Vsef is applied on the upper plate, and the lower plate
is grounded. A surrounding electrostatic field will be created as a possible outside
interference. (b) The Vr difference induced by the surrounding electrostatic field.

(a)

(b)

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3.3. Static Displacement

To simplify modeling, the electrostatic field between the movable and fixed fingers is approximated
by the parallel plate model between the engaged parts of the comb fingers. Due to the configuration of
the comb-drive, the capacitances between movable and fixed fingers in the high-voltage (V1) and
low-voltage (V2) sides, as shown in Figure 1, can be derived as:

C1 =

2n air h( x + a1 )
g

(4)

C2 =

2n airh( x + a2 )
g

(5)

and:

where x is the displacement of the rotor, n is the numbers of finger pairs, air is the permittivity of air, h is
the finger height, g is the spacing between movable and fixed comb fingers.
The capacitance between the rotor and the handle layer can be written as:

Cr =

air Asus

ox Aanch

(6)

where Asus and Aanch are the areas of the rotors suspended part and anchor, respectively. ox is the
permittivity of silicon dioxide. d is the thickness of the silicon dioxide layer. Note that Cr is a constant
because of the constant Asus and Aanch.
Assuming the rotor is a good conductor and the actuator is operated to obtain a static displacement,
in the capacitive circuit shown in Figure 1, the total potential U existing in C1, C2 and Cr can be
expressed as:

U =

1
2
C1 (V1 Vr ) 2 + C 2 (V2 Vr ) 2 + C rVr
2

(7)

The longitudinal force induced by the electrostatic potential is:

Fex =

U
x

(8)

The restoring force of the folded spring [12] can be expressed as:

Fsx = k x x =

2Ehb3
x
L3

(9)

where kx, E, b and L represent the spring constant (longitudinal direction), Youngs modules, width
and length, respectively.
In equilibrium, the electrostatic force is balanced by the restoring force of the spring, i.e., Fex = Fsx.
After some manipulation, the static displacement can be calculated as:

x=

BT 1
(a1 + a2 + CG )2 k x BT2

where B = nairh/g,
T1 = 2(a1S1 + a2S2 + CGS3)V + S12 S22,

(10)

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T2 = a1V2 + 2S1V + a2V2 2S2V,

CG = Cr/(2B),
V = V2 V1,
S1 = Va2 + V1CG,
S2 = Va1 + V2CG, and
S3 = V1a1 V2a2.
From the above derivation, it can be found that unlike conventional comb-drive actuators, the
resulting electrostatic force depends not only on the voltage applied, but also on the displacement of
the comb. This will limit the travel range (just like it does for parallel plate capacitor).
3.4. Natural Frequency
The natural frequency of the asymmetric comb-drive actuator, like typical ones, is a function of its
material properties, dimensions and boundary conditions. For simplicity, the actuator can be treated as
a lumped system [12]. Then, its natural frequency can be expressed as:
f =

1
2

kx
meq

(11)

where meq represents the equivalent mass of the actuator and equals mshuttle + mtruss +

mbeam. Here,

mshuttle, mtruss and mbeam represent the masses of the shuttle, the single truss and the single beam, respectively.
4. Experiment and Results

To verify the new actuation mechanism, we fabricated some comb-drive actuators using the one
mask process based on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer with a device layer of 50 m and a buried
oxide layer of 4 m. The structure of the comb drive actuator was patterned and etched by deep
reactive-ion etching (DRIE), then released with hydrofluoric acid (HF) etching to remove the
sacrificial oxide. Figure 3 shows a microscope image of the actuator with asymmetric initial overlaps.
Figure 3. The fabricated comb-drive actuator with different initial overlaps. Here, n = 138,
h = 50 m, L = 1250 m, b = 6 m, g = 5 m, a1 = 48.9 m, a2 = 159.3 m, Asus = 1.218 106 m2
and Aanch = 7.414 106 m2.

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The feasibility of the actuation mechanism was demonstrated by the operation of the comb-drive
actuator. The voltages were only applied on the stators and the rotor was completely insulated. The
handle layer was grounded to ensure that its voltage is zero. Before applying the dc voltages, the rotor
was static, as shown in Figure 4(a). Increasing the dc voltage at only one stator, i.e., increasing V1,
resulted in an increasing Fex, and thus the rotor motion (see Figure 4(b)).
Figure 4. The actuation of the proposed comb-drive actuator. (a) Before and (b) after
voltages were applied onto the stators, the rotor was static and moved a distance.

Figure 5 shows the relationship between the displacement of the rotor and the applied voltage. The
displacement of the rotor was measured using a high resolution microscope (on the probe station). The
experimental results agree well with the estimated ones. When the applied voltage (V1) was increased
to 72 volts, the displacement approached to 41.7 m. The static responses verify that without electrical
interconnections the rotor still can be driven using the capacitively-coupled-power delivery mechanism.
Figure 5. The estimated and measured displacements of the rotor. In this example, V2 was
fixed at 10 volt, V1 was increased (from zero) to 72 volts.

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The performance of the proposed actuation mechanism was also characterized by the dynamic
response of the fabricated actuator. Through the capacitive coupling, the actuator was driven by a dc
voltage (V2 = 5 volts) and an ac voltage (V1 = 20sint volt, where represents the radian frequency)
in air. The dynamic behavior was observed using a MEMS motion analyzer, i.e., an in-plane strobe
scope module. Figure 6 shows that the measured resonant frequency of the actuatorwhich was
driven by the applied ac voltage with a frequency ranging from 300 to 1,000 Hzis 577 Hz, which is
close to the estimated value: 615 Hz. The dynamic response further demonstrates that the new actuation
mechanism is feasible in dynamic actuation. Note that the difference between the theoretical and
experimental results may result from the nonlinear relationship between the electrostatic force and the
displacement x. However, the potential effects, such as spring hardening and softening, are out of
scope of the current work and left to be a topic of future work.
Figure 6. The measured dynamic response of the rotor.

5. Conclusions

Asymmetric comb-drive actuators were successfully designed, fabricated and implemented using
the actuation mechanism, which takes advantage of the capacitive coupling inherent existing in the
comb-drive actuator. The capacitively-coupled-power delivery was successfully used to drive the new
actuators, whose static displacement and natural frequency can be predicted from the analytical
solutions. The experimental results verified the theoretical analysis. Using this method, the rotor can be
fully insulated, i.e., the comb-drive actuators containing heterogeneous structures (e.g., flexible and
insulating folded beams) become more practical and promising to have an impact on MEMS technology.
Acknowledgments

This work was partly supported by the National Science Council in Taiwan through the Project
No. NSC 99-2627-B-239-001, NSC 99-2221-E-007-041-MY3 and NSC 101-2623-E-007-005-ET,
which is gratefully acknowledged.

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