Effects of the elastomer characteristics on mechanical behavior of a capacitive microresonator

In this paper, properties of dielectric elastomer and its utilization as resonator’s material have been investigated. Due to the limitations of resonators in geometrical and material characteristics, the mechanical stiffness of resonator cannot be changed, and thus a widerange of frequencies cannot be obtained. By applying voltage on the dielectric elastomer electrodes, a longitudinal increase in the plate will be created, which will result in compressive stress in the system due to the clamped boundaries, and therefor will reduce themechanical stiffness of the system. By controlling the mechanical stiffness of the system, a wide range of frequencies can be achieved. In order to study the static and dynamic behavior of the system, the system was first linearized using the step-by-step linearization method(SSLM) and then, by using mode summation and Galerkin method, the deformation of the plate was obtained. In this model, the effect of stretching is also considered in the calculation of the deformation. Threshold voltage of the system, frequency response and the critical dielectric voltage in different pre-stress and different dielectric coefficients have been studied.

Keywords:

MEMS , Dielectric elastomer , Threshold voltage , Stretching