Suppression of contact bounce in beam-type microelectromechanical switches using a feedforward control scheme

This paper presents a feedforward control strategy for suppressing the contact bounces in electrostatically driven microswitches. The mathematical model is first developed, including the effects of mid-plane stretching, fringing field capacitance, squeeze-film damping together with the effect of elastic contact with the stationary dielectric substrate. The contact between the movable and the stationary electrodes is modeled as a foundation made by a combination of nonlinear springs and dampers. To discretize the system of partial differential equations of the electrostatic switch into ordinary differential equations, the Galerkin's method is employed. Both fixed-fixed and fixed-free configurations of the switch are investigated. A parametric study is presented to establish the robustness and efficacy of the proposed technique to mitigate the contact bounces. Additionally, the effect of variation in the extent of damping, stretching parameter and input voltage on switching time is investigated.