Title :

Microscale ultrahigh-frequency resonant wireless powering for capacitive and resistive MEMS actuators

Author(s) :

Mita, Yoshio [Auteur]
The University of Tokyo [UTokyo]
Sakamoto, Naoyuki [Auteur]
The University of Tokyo [UTokyo]
Usami, Naoto [Auteur]
The University of Tokyo [UTokyo]
Frappé, Antoine [Auteur]
Microélectronique Silicium - IEMN [MICROELEC SI - IEMN]
Higo, Akio [Auteur]
The University of Tokyo [UTokyo]
Stefanelli, Bruno [Auteur]
Microélectronique Silicium - IEMN [MICROELEC SI - IEMN]
Shiomi, Hidehisa [Auteur]
The University of Tokyo [UTokyo]
Bourgeois, Julien [Auteur]
Franche-Comté Électronique Mécanique, Thermique et Optique - Sciences et Technologies (UMR 6174) [FEMTO-ST]
Kaiser, Andreas [Auteur]
Microélectronique Silicium - IEMN [MICROELEC SI - IEMN]

Journal title :

Sensors and Actuators A: Physical

Pages :

75-87

Publisher :

Elsevier

Publication date :

2018

ISSN :

0924-4247

English keyword(s) :

Radio frequency
Resonant mode energy transfer
Electrostatic actuator Thermal actuator
Amplitude modulation (AM)
Wireless MEMS powering
Ultrahigh frequency (UHF)

HAL domain(s) :

Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]/Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

English abstract : [en]

This paper presents a versatile chip-level wireless driving method for microelectromechanical system (MEMS) actuators. A MEMS actuator is integrated as an electrical component of a coupled LCR resonant circuit, and it ...
Show more >This paper presents a versatile chip-level wireless driving method for microelectromechanical system (MEMS) actuators. A MEMS actuator is integrated as an electrical component of a coupled LCR resonant circuit, and it rectifies the energy sent through an ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) radio frequency (RF) wave. Two types of actuators were remotely driven using the proposed method: thermal (bimorph) actuators used as the R component and capacitive (comb-drive) actuators used as the C component of a resonant receiver circuit. We demonstrated the remote actuation of a 13 Ω thermal actuator transferring 7.05 mW power with a power efficiency of 15.8%. This was achieved using coupled 500 μm diameter 5.5-turn planar coil antennas over a distance of 90 μm. When an impedance-matching configuration (Zo = 50 Ω) was used, the efficiency over a distance of 65 μm was measured to be 55.6%, which was 8.2 times greater than that of simple inductor coupling. The proposed method can be applied to future deployment scenarios, where fragile MEMS are placed on top of a system and must directly interface with the environment (thus, being prone to break). The authors propose to fabricate MEMS and energy receiver circuits monolithically on a chip, and place them on another energy transmitter chip. Thereby, the MEMS chip can avoid electrical feedthrough so that (a) the MEMS chip is easily replaceable if it breaks, and (b) the MEMS chip can move beyond wiring cable limitations. Four features are underlined in the article: (1) MEMS itself can rectify the RF energy owing to the fact that the governing equation of the MEMS actuator involves the square of the voltage and/or current, thereby, ensuring higher system-level efficiency than any other RF transceiver circuits using additional rectifying components (e.g., diodes). (2) Both the transmitter and receiver use coils of the same design, whose sizes are equivalent to those of the MEMS actuators (hundreds of micrometers). Moreover, they can be operated at UHF, owing to the much higher self-resonant frequency (fs &gt GHz) when compared to conventional transmitters (fs ≈ MHz). In addition, by using LCR resonant circuits, it is possible to not only (3) increase the transmission efficiency but also (4) multiply the driving voltage of the capacitive MEMS actuator, because of LC resonance. Voltage multiplication is quite useful for electrostatic MEMS operations because the movement is proportional to the square of the voltage across the MEMS capacitance. Comprehensive designs, implementations, and demonstrations of wireless operation are presented in this paper, for both thermal (resistive) and electrostatic (capacitive) actuators. Remote operation includes on–off-keying for MEMS without mechanical resonance and amplitude modulation of sinusoidal signals to stimulate the mechanical resonant frequency of MEMS.Show less >

Language :

Anglais

Peer reviewed article :

Oui

Audience :

Internationale

Popular science :

Non

ANR Project :

Matériel et logiciel pour créer de la matière programmable

Collections :

• Institut d'Électronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie (IEMN) - UMR 8520

Source :

Harvested from HAL