Date of Award
7-11-2015
Publication Type
Master Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.Sc.
Department
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Keywords
Comb drive, DUT, MEMS, Resonance frequency, Test
Supervisor
Rashidzadeh, Rashid
Supervisor
Muscedere, Roberto
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This work presents a test method for capacitive Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). A major class of MEMS sensors operate based on the principle of capacitance variation.The proposed test method in this work utilizes a resonant circuit to detect structural defects of capacitive MEMS sensors. It is shown that a small variation of MEMS capacitance due to a defect alters the resonance frequency considerably. It is also shown that the variation of the output amplitude can be observed for fault detection if an inductor with a high quality factor is employed in the test circuit. Mathematical approach is taken and verified to prove the validity of this work. The effects of structural defects such as short, broken and missing fingers of the MEMS comb-drive on the equivalent circuit models have been determined through frequency domain simulations.Simulation results and experimental measurements using an implemented MEMS comb drive indicate that the proposed method can detect common faults such as missing, broken and short fingers.
Recommended Citation
Dianat, Ali, "A Resonant Based Test Methodology for Capacitive MEMs" (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 5297.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/5297