Characteristics of a monolithic microvalve with a large-displacement electrostatic actuator

Jafar Haji-Babaei; Chee Yee Kwok

doi:10.1117/12.364434

29 September 1999 Characteristics of a monolithic microvalve with a large-displacement electrostatic actuator

Jafar Haji-Babaei, Chee Yee Kwok

Proceedings Volume 3891, Electronics and Structures for MEMS; (1999) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.364434
Event: Asia Pacific Symposium on Microelectronics and MEMS, 1999, Gold Coast, Australia

Abstract

Characteristics of a monolithic microvalve using a curved electrode electrostatic actuator and an integrable valve orifice are described. The valve is a normally open electrostatic microvalve with a 83 volts switching voltage. The curved electrode is a curled up cantilever structure with few hundred micrometers out of plane displacement. Lateral buckling of the actuator is overcome by using a mesh type or finger strip type metalization pattern. Cantilever with curvatures angle ranging 0 to more than 360 degrees have been achieved by changing the thickness ratio of composite layers of the cantilever. A valve channel consisting of three inverted pyramids in tandem have been sued. The flow rate of the valve linearly depends on the pressure difference across the valve. Thickness variation of the standard wafers has minimal effect on the final orifice sizes of the valve. The surface micromachining processes used to fabricate actuators and bulk micromachining process used to fabricate the valve channel, have been integrated in a set of processes to fabricate a monolithic normally open microvalve.

Citation Download Citation

Jafar Haji-Babaei and Chee Yee Kwok "Characteristics of a monolithic microvalve with a large-displacement electrostatic actuator", Proc. SPIE 3891, Electronics and Structures for MEMS, (29 September 1999); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.364434

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