A New Model of Fringing Capacitance and its Application to the Control of Parallel-Plate Electrostatic Micro Actuators

Abstract: Fringing field has to be taken into account in the formulation of electrostatic parallel-plate actuators when the gap separating the electrodes is comparable to the geometrical dimensions of the moving plate. Even in this case, the existing formulations often result in complicated mathematical models from which it is difficult to determine the deflection of the moving plate for given voltages and therefore to predict the necessary applied voltages for actuation control. This work presents a new method for the modeling of fringing field, in which the effect of fringing field is modeled as a serial capacitor. Numerical simulation demonstrates the suitability of this formulation. Based on this model, a robust control scheme is constructed using the theory of input-to-state stabilization (ISS) and back-stepping state feedback design. The stability and the performance of the system using this control scheme are demonstrated through both stability analysis and numerical simulation.