Journal
JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS
Volume 18, Issue 1, Pages 174-185Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/JMEMS.2008.2008624
Keywords
Contact-line sliding; electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD); liquid-metal (LM) microswitch; MEMS switch; microframe
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Liquid-metal (LM) droplet-based MEMS switches have mostly been restricted to slow applications until now due to the following reasons: 1) a relatively large switching gap (distance) needed to accommodate imprecise volumes and locations of droplets on the device and 2) lack of high-speed actuation to move the droplets quickly across the switching gap. To combat these problems, we explore switching by sliding the solid-LM-gas triple contact line rather than the entire droplet. This new approach allows us to use a microframe, which not only consistently positions the LM droplet but also makes the switching gap less sensitive to the errors in the deposited-droplet volume, allowing us to design microswitches with very small switching gaps (e.g., 10 mu m for 600 mu m-diameter droplets). Furthermore, a study of electrowetting-on-dielectric identifies a regime of fast contact-line sliding at the onset of droplet spreading. By moving the contact line fast across a small switching distance, we demonstrate a low-latency LM switch with 60 mu s switch-on latency (similar to 20 times better than other LM-switch technologies) and better than 5 mu s signal rise/fall time, while boasting no contact bounce, as expected from an LM switch. High power-handling capability and long-term reliability are also discussed. [2008-0135]
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