Bistable cantilevers actuated by fringing electrostatic fields

Bistable microstructures are distinguished by their ability to stay in two different stable configurations at the same loading. They manifest rich behavior and are advantageous in applications such as switches, nonvolatile memories, and sensors. Bistability of initially curved or buckled double-clamped beams, curved plates, and shells is associated with mechanical geometric nonlinearity appearing due to coupling between bending and compressive axial/in-plane stress. The bistable behavior is achieved by using a combination of carefully tailored initial shape and constrained boundaries. However, these statically indeterminate structures suffer from high sensitivity to temperature and residual stress. In this work, we show using the model that by combining electrostatic actuation by fringing fields with direct transversal forcing by a parallel-plate electrode or piezoelectric (PZT) transducer, bistable behavior can be obtained in a simple cantilever structure distinguished by robustness and low thermal sensitivity. Reduced-order model of the cantilever was built using Galerkin decomposition, the electrostatic force was obtained by means of three-dimensional (3D) finite elements (FEs) modeling. We also demonstrate that operation of the device in the vicinity of the bistability threshold may enhance the frequency sensitivity of the cantilever to loading. This sensitivity-enhancement approach may have applications in a broad range of resonant microelectromechanical inertial, force, mass, and biosensors as well as in atomic force microscopy (AFM).