Estimation of Air Damping in Out-of-Plane Comb-Drive Actuators

The development of new compliant resonant microsystems and the trend towards further miniaturization have recently raised the issue of the accuracy and reliability of computational tools for the estimation of fluid damping. Focusing on electrostatically actuated torsional micro-mirrors, a major dissipation contribution is linked to the constrained flow of air at comb fingers. In the case of large tilting angles of the mirror plate, within a period of oscillation the geometry of the air domain at comb-drives gets largely distorted, and the dissipation mechanism is thereby affected. In this communication, we provide an appraisal of simple analytical solutions to estimate the dissipation in the ideal case of air flow between infinite plates, at atmospheric pressure. The results of numerical simulations are also reported to assess the effect on damping of the finite size of actual geometries.