A bionic approach for the mechanical and electrical decoupling of an MEMS capacitive sensor in ultralow force measurement

doi:10.1007/s11465-023-0747-1

Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering

2023, Vol. 18

Issue (2): 31 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11465-023-0747-1

本期目录

A bionic approach for the mechanical and electrical decoupling of an MEMS capacitive sensor in ultralow force measurement

Wendi GAO^1,^2,^3,⁴, Bian TIAN^1,², Cunlang LIU¹, Yingbiao MI¹, Chen JIA^1,²(

), Libo ZHAO^1,²(

), Tao LIU¹, Nan ZHU¹, Ping YANG^1,², Qijing LIN^1,², Zhuangde JIANG^1,², Dong SUN^1,⁵

¹. State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, International Joint Laboratory for Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Measurement Technologies, Overseas Expertise Introduction Center for Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Nano Measurement Technologies Discipline Innovation, Xi’an Jiaotong University (Yantai) Research Institute for Intelligent Sensing Technology and System, School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
². Shandong Laboratory of Yantai Advanced Materials and Green Manufacturing, Yantai 265599, China
³. State Key Laboratory of Robotics and Systems (HIT), Harbin 150006, China
⁴. Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
⁵. Department of Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

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Abstract：

Capacitive sensors are efficient tools for biophysical force measurement, which is essential for the exploration of cellular behavior. However, attention has been rarely given on the influences of external mechanical and internal electrical interferences on capacitive sensors. In this work, a bionic swallow structure design norm was developed for mechanical decoupling, and the influences of structural parameters on mechanical behavior were fully analyzed and optimized. A bionic feather comb distribution strategy and a portable readout circuit were proposed for eliminating electrostatic interferences. Electrostatic instability was evaluated, and electrostatic decoupling performance was verified on the basis of a novel measurement method utilizing four complementary comb arrays and application-specific integrated circuit readouts. An electrostatic pulling experiment showed that the bionic swallow structure hardly moved by 0.770 nm, and the measurement error was less than 0.009% for the area-variant sensor and 1.118% for the gap-variant sensor, which can be easily compensated in readouts. The proposed sensor also exhibited high resistance against electrostatic rotation, and the resulting measurement error dropped below 0.751%. The rotation interferences were less than 0.330 nm and (1.829 × 10⁻⁷)°, which were 35 times smaller than those of the traditional differential one. Based on the proposed bionic decoupling method, the fabricated sensor exhibited overwhelming capacitive sensitivity values of 7.078 and 1.473 pF/µm for gap-variant and area-variant devices, respectively, which were the highest among the current devices. High immunity to mechanical disturbances was maintained simultaneously, i.e., less than 0.369% and 0.058% of the sensor outputs for the gap-variant and area-variant devices, respectively, indicating its great performance improvements over existing devices and feasibility in ultralow biomedical force measurement.

Key words： micro-electro-mechanical system capacitive sensor bionics operation instability mechanical and electrical decoupling biomedical force measurement

收稿日期: 2022-07-15 出版日期: 2023-07-12

Corresponding Author(s): Chen JIA,Libo ZHAO

引用本文:

. [J]. Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering, 2023, 18(2): 31.
Wendi GAO, Bian TIAN, Cunlang LIU, Yingbiao MI, Chen JIA, Libo ZHAO, Tao LIU, Nan ZHU, Ping YANG, Qijing LIN, Zhuangde JIANG, Dong SUN. A bionic approach for the mechanical and electrical decoupling of an MEMS capacitive sensor in ultralow force measurement. Front. Mech. Eng., 2023, 18(2): 31.

链接本文:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fme/CN/10.1007/s11465-023-0747-1
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fme/CN/Y2023/V18/I2/31

Fig.1

Fig.2

Parameters	Value
Length of the supporting beams, $L b$	600 μm
Width of the supporting beams, $W b$	5 μm
Thickness of the supporting beams, $T b$	50 μm
Length of the beak probe, $L beak$	2000 μm
Length of the swallow head region, $L head$	1500 μm
Length of the swallow wing region, $L wing$	5000 μm
Length of the swallow body region, $L body$	3500 μm
Air gap of the tri-plate combs, $d g1$ , $d g2$	3 μm, 15 μm
Air gap of the area-variant combs, $d a0$	3 μm
Overlapped length of the combs, $L co$	375 μm ^a), 10 μm ^b)
Thickness of the combs, $T c$	50 μm

Tab.1

Fig.3

Fig.4

Fig.5

Fig.6

Fig.7

Fig.8

Fig.9

Fig.10

Fig.11

Fig.12

Fig.13

Fig.14

Parameter	Value
Efficient air gap of the combs, $d g1$	3.90 μm
Initial misalignment, $y 0$	0.15 μm
Overlapped length of the combs, $L co$	375 μm
Thickness of the combs, $T c$	50 μm
Number of the combs, $N g$	330
Stiffness along the y axis, $k y$	25.38 N/m

Tab.2

Fig.15

Fig.16

Fig.17

Fig.18

Fig.19

Fig.20

Fig.21

Fig.22

Fig.23

Tab.3

Abbreviations
AFM	Atomic force microscope
ASIC	Application-specific integrated circuit
CCD	Charge coupled device
GUI	Graphical user interface
MEMS	Micro-electro-mechanical system
PCB	Print circuit board
PMMA	Polymethyl methacrylate
SOI	Silicon-on-insulator
Variables
c	Damping of the swallow structure
C	Overlapped area of the comb capacitor
C_C1, C_C2, C_C3, C_C4	Complementary comb arrays
C_d1, C_d2	Frequency decoupling capacitors of the bias-scaling circuit
C_in+, C_in?	Inputs of the ASIC chip
C_N1, C_N2, C_N3	Negative sensing arrays
C_P1, C_P2, C_P3	Positive sensing arrays
d	Gap of the combs
d_a0	Initial gap of the area-variant combs
d_g1, d_g2	Air gap of the gap-variant combs
Δd	Step size of the manipulation stage movements
D₁, D₂, D₃	Distances between six supporting beams and the structure center
E	Young’s modulus of the movable structure
E_eg	Measurement error from the electrostatic force of gap-variant device
F_0yi, F_0zi (i = 1,2,…,6)	Reaction forces along the y and z axis at the fixed end of supporting beams, respectively
F_e	General pulling electrostatic force of comb arrays
F_ea, F_eg	Pulling electrostatic forces of the area- and gap-variant comb arrays, respectively
F_x, F_y, F_z	Loading forces along the x, y, and z axis at the beak tip, respectively
$F z ′$	Equivalent force along the z axis at the structure center
I_y, I_z	Moment inertia around the y and z axis of the beam lateral section, respectively
k_y	Stiffness of the swallow structure
L_b	Length of the supporting beam
L_body, L_beak	Lengths of the swallow body region and beak probe, respectively
L_c	Length of the comb plate
L_co	Overlapped length of the combs
L_head, L_tail, L_wing	Lengths of the swallow head region, tail region, and wing region, respectively
L_off	Offset distance between the structure center and front frame of the head region
Line_1	Sampling line along the swallow body
Line_2	Sampling line along the inside frames of the swallow wing
Line_3	Sampling line along the outside frames of the swallow wing
m	Mass of the swallow structure
M_0y, M_0z	Reaction moments around the y and z axis at the fixed end of supporting beams, respectively
M_e	Planar electrostatic moment of comb arrays
M_x	Moment around the x axis derived from F_z
N_a, N_g	Numbers of the area- and gap-variant combs, respectively
PAD_Ci (i = 1,2,…,4)	Comb pads of the complementary sensing arrays
PAD_Ni (i = 1,2,3)	Comb pads of the negative sensing arrays
PAD_Pi (i = 1,2,3)	Comb pads of the positive sensing arrays
PAD_EXC	Excitation pad
r	Stiffness ratio
R	Scaling factor of the bias-scaling circuit
R₁, R₂	Scaling resistors of the bias-scaling circuit
S_c	Capacitive sensitivity of the complementary comb arrays
T_b	Thickness of the supporting beam
T_c	Thickness of the combs
V_a	Applied voltage bias between the combs
V_api	Critical voltage applied to the gap-variant combs
V_cc	Power supply of the ASIC chip
V_dc	DC bias applied to the combs
V_EXC	Scaled excitation voltages of the ASIC chip
V_EXCA, V_EXCB	Excitation voltages of the ASIC chip
w_E	Elastic deformation along the z axis derived from F_z
$w F z$	Translation bending deformation along the z axis derived from F_z
$w M x$	Rotation bending deformation along the z axis derived from M_x
w_x	Bending deformation along the x axis
w_y	Bending deformation along the y axis
$w ˙ y$	First order derivative of w_y
$w ¨ y$	Second order derivative of w_y
w_z	Bending deformation along the z axis
W_b	Width of the supporting beams
W_body, W_is, W_wing	Widths of the swallow body region, island region, and wing region, respectively
y₀	Initial misalignment of the asymmetrical gap-variant combs
ε	Dielectric permittivity in air
δ_y	Bending angle along the y axis

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