Bistable Microdevice with Electrothermal Compliant Mechanism

The compliance mechanism plays a crucial role in the MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) device design as it provides elastic body deformation through respective force and motion transmission. This paper presents, an electrothermal compliant mechanism using V-beam combo structure. Design methodology, fabrication process flow, characterization results and future scope of the proposed device are elaborated. The limited elasticity of Silicon material resulted in limited response of the fabricated device compared to the FEM tool results. Hence an extended optimization for the design structure through POLYMUMPs process is recommended to overcome the limitation. The proposed device finds an application in RF switch domain with its low power consumption feature.