Numerical simulation and analysis of electrically actuated microbeam-based MEMS capacitive switch

The MEMS capacitive switch based on fixed-fixed microbeam has garnered significant attention due to their geometric simplicity and broad applicability. The accurate model which describes the multiphysical coupled-field of MEMS capacitive switch should be developed to predict their electromechanical behaviors. The improved macromodel of the fixed-fixed microbeam-based MEMS capacitive switch is presented to investigate the behavior of electrically actuated MEMS capacitive switch in this paper, the macromodel provides an effective and accurate design tool for this class of MEMS devices because of taking account into some effects simultaneously including fringing field effect, midplane stretching effect, residual stress and multiphysical coupled-field effect. The numerical analysis of mechanical characterizations of electrically actuated microbeam-based MEMS capacitive switch are performed by the finite element Newmark method, and the performances of static and dynamic of MEMS capacitive switch are obtained. The numerical results show that, with only a few nodes used in the computation, the FEM-Newmark gives the identical results to other numerical methods, such as the shooting method and experiments. Moreover, the proposed model can offer proper and convenient approach for numerical calculations, and promote design of MEMS devices.