Electrothermoelastic modeling of MEMS gripper

The design of many thermal Microelectromechanical (MEMS) actuators is often based on finite element analysis, but lacks analytical insight. In this paper we report a novel electro-thermal microgripper and a comprehensive thermal modeling of a general 5 lineshape microbeam’s actuator using 1-D steady state heat equations. Because of the variety of microgripper fabrication technologies and their applications, different thermal boundary conditions are considered for lifted off and attached grippers. Parametric and nonparametric electrothermomechanical identification models for silicon on insulator microgripper, fabricated on 100 μm device layer, are obtained.