A preliminary investigation of the potential mechanical sensitivity of vertical comb drives

This article describes a preliminary step taken in investigating the potential of vertical comb drives to be used as force-compensation mechanisms in interfacial force microscopes, by exploring the lower limit of the stiffness of the springs the comb drives can be fabricated with. The stiffness of their springs will affect the sensitivity of the microscope. Six vertical comb drives were fabricated for this study; the dimensions of their spring beams were chosen with the intention of giving them stiffnesses of three different orders of magnitude. During fabrication it was found that etching the tops of some of the teeth down to create the vertical offset between the combs can be done using only photoresist to mask the rest of the teeth. The stiffnesses of the fabricated springs were estimated by applying loads to them and measuring their resulting deflections. Weights were applied to the two comb drives with the stiffest springs. Voltages were also applied to them so as to determine the force-voltage relationship for their comb design. Since the other four comb drives had the same comb design, the stiffnesses of their springs could be estimated from the displacements of their movable combs when voltages were applied to them. (paper)