Several types of micro-devices are adversely affected by high frequency mechanical vibrations present in the operating environment. Examples include MEMS vibratory gyroscopes and resonators, and micro-optics. Various types of MEMS vibration isolators have been developed for use in the packaging of these vibration sensitive devices. Passive isolators consist of a spring-mass-damper MEMS device and usually have a very high mechanical quality factor, which makes them susceptible to ringing at the isolator's resonant frequency. Active isolators have been realized by using state sensing of the proof mass motion and feeding one or more of these states back through an actuator to adjust the frequency response of the isolator. For example, the technique known as skyhook damping uses velocity feedback to adjust, and typically increase, the damping of the isolator. Although these technique are doable, they require state sensing or state estimation, with feedback electronics to drive the actuator.
A simpler MEMS active vibration isolator architecture employs only a parallel plate actuator (PPA) with the MEMS spring-mass-damper structure. The PPA driven with a DC voltage, in its stable operating range, displaces the proof mass, which results in a change in the effective system spring constant due to the electrostatic spring softening effect. This results in a change in the resonant frequency and the quality factor of the isolator. However, due to the nonlinearities inherent in this type of device, the stable operating range is reduced as the PPA voltage is increased. Furthermore, even when the isolator is stable in steady-state, a sufficiently large transient response can also drive it into the unstable regime, resulting in the electrodes snapping into contact.
In this study, the PPA based active vibrator isolator is developed and its performance is evaluated. The characteristics of the transient instability are investigated and its stable range of operation is specified, for booth external disturbances and rapid application of the control voltage. This MEMS PPA based active vibration isolator can improve performance compared to passive isolators, while being much simpler than state feedback active isolators.
A mobile three-dimensional active vibration isolator and its application to cold atom interferometry