Static and dynamic characterization of magnetically actuated CMOS-micromachined cantilever-in-cantilever devices

In this paper we compare the performance of several magnetically actuated C MOS-micromachined cantilever-in-cantilever structures. We also investigate the importance of thermal effects to the actuation and determine that these are significant only for static deflection operations; resonant frequencie s show very little thermal dependence at the currents we employed, since la rge deflections were observed. Qualitative analysis of device behaviour is given using simplified formulae, and a more precise simulation is obtained using a finite element software package (ANSYS). These results are compared with experimental data.