SGER: Distributed Control of Capacitive Micro-Cantilever Arrays

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

Capacitively actuated and sensed microcantilever arrays have great promise as a basic micro-electro-mechanical device. We investigate novel dynamics and controls inspired schemes for overcoming two major problems inherent in such devices. We propose to use current measurements in an indirect sensing sensing scheme by using a dynamical model of the cantilever to build a state estimator for measuring cantilever displacement, thus avoiding the potentially corrupting secondary sensing signal now commonly used. We also propose to build and control tightly coupled arrays of such cantilevers where the significant inter-cantilever coupling is compensated for (rather than avoided) by using distributed feedback loops.