NANOMATERIALS SCIENCE & ENGINEERING Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 44-48 (2020) RESEARCH ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.34624/nmse.v2i1.11177 44 ISSN: 2184-7002 Nanomaterials Science & Engineering This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Sizing electrode and its effect on performance of a microactuator Mohamed Ahmed ESHAG 1,2,3 , Musaab ZAROG 4 * 1 School of Electrical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, 610031, China 2 School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Sudan University of Sciences and Technology, P.O. Box.407, Khartoum, Sudan 3 PLOP Department, Petro-Energy E&P Co. Ltd, PDOC & PE Tower, Alsunut Area, Almogran, Khartoum, Sudan 4 Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 33, Al-Khod, Muscat, 123, Oman *Corresponding author, e-mail address: musaabh@squ.edu.om Received 22 January 2020; accepted 4 March 2020; published online 10 March 2020 ABSTRACT The vibration amplitude and its frequency are the main factors that affect the performance of resonating microactuators and microsensorson. Electrostatic and piezoelectric actuation/sensing are very common methods used to design Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS). Both methods requires adding electrode layer for detection or actuation purposes which is normally very small is dimension and therefore have low effect on the performance of MEMS device. In some cases, even a small shift in the vibration resonance frequency of the device or its amplitude of vibration can highly affect the device performance. This work investigates the effect of sizing electrode on the performance of electrostatically actuated MEMS device. Electrode length was varied from fully covering the actuator layer to covering 10% only. ANSYS finite element was used as a simulation tool. 1. INTRODUCTION MEMS resonators are the key players in most of the MEMS sensors and actuators. Electrostatic actuation is most commonly used method of actuation compared to other alternatives methods (e.g. electrothermal and piezoelectric) and this is mainly due to the low power consumption and ability to very high resonance frequencies [1, and 2]. Electrode layers are used to apply electrostatic voltage to the actuated resonators. For cantilever resonator, a top layer of electrode is deposited to conduct voltage. The electrode characteristics (geometrical dimensions and elastic parameters) will influence the performance of the resonating structure [3]. On the other hand, the deposited electrode material might have undesirable mechanical and electronic properties compared to resonator device. Reducing the electrode length will reduce their effect but at the same time this will affect the active area for electrostatic actuation which may require high voltage to be applied. Effect of reshaping the metal electrode as well as changing the thickness, on the functionality of the resonators, were investigated in the literature [4,5, 6 and 7]. This work aims to investigate the effect of electrode length on the amplitude of electrostatically actuated microcantilever. 2. MODEL OF AN ELECTROSTATIC ACTUATOR Electrostatic actuator, under investigation, consist of four main parts: silicon base layer (200×2×20 μm 3 ), isolator layer silicon dioxide (50×3×20 μm 3 ), silicon actuator layer (200×2×20 μm 3 ), and copper pad layer (200×2×20μm 3 ). The device layout, which was modelled in finite element (FE) software (ANSYS v.15), is shown in Figure.1. The properties of material used are presented in Table.1.