JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO.

5, OCTOBER 2005 1099

A Bulk-Micromachined Bistable Relay

With U-Shaped Thermal Actuators
Jin Qiu, Member, IEEE, Member, ASME, Jeffrey H. Lang, Fellow, IEEE,
Alexander H. Slocum, Member, IEEE, Fellow, ASME, and Alexis C. Weber

Abstract—This paper reports a deep-reactive ion etching

(DRIE)-through-etched laterally bistable MEMS relay for power
applications, with a primary emphasis on the design and modeling
of its U-shaped transient thermal actuators, and a secondary
emphasis on the design and fabrication of its contact element. In
this relay, a contact crossbar is carried by a curved-beam bistable
mechanism [1], which is toggled by transient U-shaped thermal ac-
tuators with their hot beam adiabaticly heated by electrical pulses.
Each U-shaped thermal actuator comprises uniform-thickness hot
and cold beams with a gap between them so they bend differently.
This paper develops both a basic model and a complete model
for the actuator that are verified by Finite Element Analysis and
serve as effective design tools. The DRIE process creates nonideal
etched surfaces, which pose challenges for good relay contacts. Fig. 1. Basic fabrication method of the relay.
Both contact design and process development are discussed to help
alleviate this problem. The fabricated relay exhibits a minimum
total on-state resistance of 60 m

, and a maximum current Lateral beam deflection.

carrying capacity of 3 A. It switches with a 1 ms actuation pulse,
and a maximum 5 Hz repetition rate. [1415]
Index Terms—Bistable relay, DRIE footing, microelectrome-
chanical systems (MEMS) relay, nonlinear beam analysis, relay
contact, thermal actuator.
LIST OF SYMBOLS IN ACTUATOR MECHANICAL MODELING
The subscript and refer to parameters related to the hot
beam and the cold beam, respectively. Capital letters in paren-
thesis in the following list refer to corresponding normalized
parameters.
Beam width (wafer thickness).
Young’s modulus.
Force, actuator force.
Actuator blocked force.
Beam moment of inertia.
Beam initial length.
Moment.
Beam axial compression force.
Beam thickness.
Initial gap between hot and cold beam.
Temperature rise in hot beam.
Initial distance between hot and cold beam centerlines.
Manuscript received August 31, 2004; revised April 18, 2005. This work was
based on the Ph.D. dissertation of J. Qiu [15]. This work was supported by ABB
Corporate research, Baden-Dattwil, Switzerland. Fabrication was performed in
the Microsystems Technology Laboratories of MIT. Subject Editor C.-J. Kim.
J. Qiu is with WiSpry, Inc., Irvine, CA 92618 USA (e-mail: jqiu@alum.
mit.edu).
J. H. Lang is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA.
A. H. Slocum and A. C. Weber are with the Department of Mechanical Engi-
neering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JMEMS.2005.856676
1057-7157/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
Beam coordinate.
Thermal expansion coefficient.
Beam tip lateral deflection.
Actuator free displacement.
Ratio of beam tip axial shortening, caused by beam lat-
eral curving, to beam length.
Beam tip rotation.
Note: In this paper, “axial” refers to the direction along the
initial beam length (the - direction), and “lateral” refers to the
in-plane direction perpendicular to it. By such definition, both
directions do not change with the bending of the beam. As can
be seen in Fig. 7(b), the direction of the axial force is always
horizontal, and the lateral forces and are always sideways.
Both axial and lateral deflections of the beam are also defined
in the above directions.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE development of MEMS relays has attracted consider-
able attention in recent years. Relays have been fabricated
through surface [2], [4]–[6] and bulk [3], [7] micromachining,
have employed electrical [3], [6], magnetic [4], [7] and thermal
[2], [5] actuation, have employed monostable [2], [3], [5]–[7]
and bistable [4] structures, and have employed lateral [2], [5]
and vertical [3], [4], [6], [7] moving contacts. One relay has
employed a liquid-metal movement [5]. The applications have
ranged from signal [2], [4], [5] to power [3], [6], [7] switching.
For power switching requirements, the lowest reported on-state
resistance is 14 [3] and the highest reported current-car-
rying capacity is several Amperes [6]. None of these relays are
designed to be mechanically bistable, which is a main feature of
the relay developed by this paper. Some preliminary results of
this paper are presented in [8].

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 1100
Fig. 2. Relay plan view.
The relay reported here is a bulk micromachined thermally
actuated bistable lateral relay for power applications. The bulk
micromachined structure ensures good thermal conduction at
the relay contact, which together with a low contact resistance,
contributes to a high current-carrying capacity. Compared with
other actuators, the thermal actuator has a larger force and
stroke, and requires a lower driving voltage. When coupled
with a bistable structure, the disadvantage of the high power re-
quired for thermal actuation is minimized because only a small
amount of transient energy is needed to change the bistable
state. Contact resistance is a function of contact force among
other things. To have a low resistance, the desired force is set to
be more than 1 mN. In order to have a large stand-off voltage
when the relay is in its off-state, a minimum gap between the
contacts is specified as 24 . One potential application of
this relay is to disconnect ac loads at their zero current point.
To achieve this, the switching time is required to be less than 4
ms. Switching at the zero current point reduces the energy that
the small MEMS contacts must absorb in the subsequent arc.
Similarly, the relay must open quickly at its zero voltage point
to avoid an arc.
The basic fabrication scheme is shown in Fig. 1. A silicon de-
vice wafer is through-etched by DRIE and bonded to a handle
wafer that has shallow etched pits, above which the device fea-
tures can move. Fig. 2 shows the relay plan view, with shaded
areas anchored to a handle wafer. As can be seen in Fig. 2, all
relay components move laterally in a direction parallel to the
wafer plane, thus the relay contact happens through the side-
walls of DRIE etched beams as they are pushed against each
other. The sidewalls are deep etched surfaces, which are not per-
fectly planar. This poses challenges that are a main topic of this
paper.
At the center of the relay is a mechanically bistable precurved
double beam [1] that moves laterally in the wafer plane. A
crossbar is attached to the double beam by a cantilever beam.
When the double beam is in its as-etched position (solid lines in
Fig. 2) the two contacts below the crossbar are not connected,
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JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2005
Fig. 3. Contact geometry explored.
and the relay is open. When the double beam snaps toward its
second stable position (dashed lines in Fig. 2), it pushes the
crossbar against the two contacts, and the relay is closed. Good
electrical contact is ensured through metal deposited on the
etched sidewalls; flat contacts have experimentally proven to
give the best electrical contact. Thermal Actuator #1 in Fig. 2
deflects downward to close the relay. Thermal Actuator #2
deflects upward to open the relay.
II. RELAY CONTACT
The basic contact component employed in this relay com-
prises a flat crossbar and two flat relay contacts. The crossbar,
attached to the bistable double beam through a cantilever, is re-
quired to provide balanced contact force on both contacts when
the double beam’s deflection toward the second stable position
is blocked. The shape of the contact structure and the mechan-
ical characteristics of the double beam can both vary with fab-
rication errors. The flat-flat contact shapes and the compliant
cantilever coupling are designed to lower the dependence of the
two contact forces on fabrication variations.
Other crossbar and contact shapes have been fabricated and
tested as shown in Fig. 3. In the figure, the upper element is the
crossbar, which can move laterally to close the two contacts at
the lower position. Even with the extra cantilever compliance
discussed later, all of these have worse contact resistance than
the flat-flat contacts shown in Fig. 2. In most cases, the crossbars
shown in Fig. 3 make contact on only one of the two contacts;
the other contact is not touched. Nonflat contact shapes have
more variation during the mask making and photolithography
steps, so the shape errors are larger than for flat ones. In addition,
all of the nonflat shapes have a point contact in 2D, and so an
 QIU et al.: BULK-MICROMACHINED BISTABLE RELAY WITH U-SHAPED THERMAL ACTUATORS 1101

Fig. 4. f-d characteristic of double beam and attached softspring-coupled crossbar. (a) f-d curve of double beam. (b) f-d curve of crossbar. The Bistable beam has
m m
a thickness of 12  , an initial apex height of 72  , a length of 4 mm, a width (wafer thickness) of 0.3 mm, and a Yong’s modulus of 169 GPa; the cantilever
m m
beam has a thickness of 12  , a length of 500  , a width (wafer thickness) of 0.3 mm; the crossbar has an initial distance to the contacts of 114  . m
equal amount of shape variation is more significant for sharp
corners than for flat edges. Also, several configurations shown
in Fig. 3 have their contact surfaces not perpendicular to the
crossbar motion. Friction can occur in these cases, which makes
the contact positions unpredictable.
Fig. 4(a) shows the force-displacement (f-d) relation of the
bistable double beams with the design dimensions stated in the
figure description. These dimensions are chosen to meet the
relay specification outlined in Section I. The relation has three Fig. 5. Microscope picture of the cantilever and the closed contacts.
regions of different stiffness. They are two short regions of very
large positive stiffness at the beginning and the end of the rela-
tion, and a long region of low negative stiffness in between. [1]
establishes that with , the f-d curve shown in Fig. 4(a)
can be described with
(1)
(2)
where is the ratio of the double beam initial apex height to
the beam thickness , is the Young’s modulus, is the beam Fig. 6. Schematic of the electrothermal actuator.
moment of inertia, and is the beam length. The center clamp
between the double beams is designed to constrain the twisting tion of the crossbar, closer than without the extra compliance, to
mode during beam deflection through the negative stiffness re- have the desired contact force of 4 mN. The contact force vari-
gion. Even though most of the twisting mode is constrained, ance resulted from an etched gap variance of 4 is reduced
some remains, which makes the orientation of beam center un- to 0.6 mN with the modified f-d curve. The center of the two
predictable. However, during the second positive stiffness re- contacts, the crossbar, and the double beam are aligned in the
gion, there is no twisting mode present so the beam center is per- moving direction of the double beam. In this way the crossbar
fectly parallel to the contacts. Thus the second positive stiffness remains parallel to the contacts when pushed against the two
region is where the contact should be positioned. To have a total contacts and the force on the two contacts are equal. The can-
contact force of 4 mN, the contact point, as shown in Fig. 4(a), tilever beam can also mechanically self-adjust to balance the
should be positioned at about 137 on the axis. However, force on each contact, as well as to conform the crossbar to the
two factors affect the relative position of the contact point on contacts when opposite contact sidewalls are slightly vertically
the f-d curve. First, photolithography and DRIE through-etching unparallel. Fig. 5 shows a closed crossbar with contacts.
can typically produce an etched feature width variation of about DRIE through-etch creates deep nonideal etched sidewalls,
4 from the mask design. Second, the variation of double which pose challenges to good relay contact and metallization.
beam thickness can change the shape of the f-d curve. Both ef- The fabrication steps for creating better etched sidewalls and
fects can make the contact force unpredictable and may even achieving better sidewall metallization are described later in
prevent contact. Section IV of this paper.
Inclusion of a cantilever beam having dimensions described
in the caption of Fig. 4 solves this problem. Fig. 4(b) also shows III. ELECTROTHERMAL ACTUATION OF
the f-d curve of the crossbar attached to the cantilever. With the THE BISTABLE MECHANISM
extra compliance of the cantilever, both the positive stiffness re-
gions of the double beam become much more compliant, while A. Design and Modeling Overview
the negative stiffness region becomes stiffer. Now the contacts Electrothermal actuators are commonly used in MEMS
should be designed to be 114 away from the etched posi- [9]–[12]. Fig. 6 shows the schematic of the U-shaped thermal

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 1102 JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2005

Fig. 7. Thermal actuator mechanical model. (a) Deflection of thermal actuator. (b) Free body diagram of the three segments. Note: The axial direction is horizontal
and the lateral direction is vertical, they do not change with the beam bending.

arrows in Fig. 8(b). First, when the beam tip lateral deflection is
nonzero, the axial force contributes a moment on the beam so
it affects its lateral deflection. Second, the lateral curving of the
beam causes its tip to shrink back axially. The basic model gives
a closed form solution and design, which can be verified and
refined by the complete model. Fig. 7(a) shows that the hot beam
“buckles” in the center during the beam deflection, it should be
Fig. 8. Treatment of beam segments in the mechanical modeling of thermal
noted that this is not mainly caused by axial force such as in
actuator. (a) Basic model. (b) Complete model. a clamped-clamped beam case. The “buckling” exists in both
basic and complete models, though axial force does amplify the
actuator developed in this paper. Two beams are mechanically buckling in the complete model.
anchored at one end, and joined together at the other end. One In both the basic and complete models for the thermal actu-
beam is coated with metal while the other is not, so a current ator shown in Fig. 7, assume a top hot beam length of , thick-
going around the beams generates heat in the bare silicon beam ness of and moment of inertial of , a bottom cold beam
while the coated beam remains cold due to the high metal elec- length of , thickness of and moment of inertial of , an
trical conductance. The hot beam expands thermally, but due initial gap between the two beams of , a beam width (wafer
to the constraint of the cold beam, both deflect laterally at the thickness) into the paper of , a uniform temperature rise in the
joint tip. This tip motion is used as the actuation. The heating hot beam of and in the cold beam of zero, a thermal expan-
of the hot beam is controlled to be very short, so the actuator sion coefficient of , a compression force inside the hot beam
is in a thermal transient during the actuation. During actuation, at the top (which means a tension force inside the cold beam),
the gap between the two beams varies in time along the beams. upward forces and on the hot and cold beam tips and an
This is different from a bimorph type thermal actuator where no upward net force on actuator tip of , a clockwise moment on
gap exists thus all layers of the bending structure would deflect the hot beam tip of , a clockwise moment on the cold beam
in the same shape. While the treatment of the bimorph thermal tip of , a downward tip lateral displacement , and a clock-
actuator can be found in literature such as in [9], no analytic wise tip rotation .
modeling of the U-shaped thermal actuator in the literature has
been found. The detailed mechanical modeling of the actuator B. Basic Mechanical Model of Actuator
is therefore developed and presented here.
In the basic model, the beam bending equation is
Two important characteristics of the actuator are 1) its
blocked force at the tip when the tip displacement is
blocked and 2) its free displacement at the tip when no tip (3)
force is applied. These characteristics will be set by the needs
of the relay. In the modeling, the temperature rise of the hot where is the Young’s modulus, is the beam moment
beam is assumed to be uniform, and the temperature rise of the of inertia, and is the beam lateral displacement.
cold beam is assumed to be zero. The modeling approach is Equation (3) together with clamped boundary conditions and
1) separate the actuator, as shown in Fig. 7(a), into three free small approximation, yields the deflections of the hot and
bodies as shown in Fig. 7(b): the hot beam, the cold beam and cold beam tips as
the connector beam; 2) write the relations of force/moment
and displacement/rotation for each of these three members (4)
together with the coupling boundary conditions; and (3) solve
the equation array. (5)
As shown in Fig. 8(a), the basic model assumes that the lateral
beam deflection is only affected by moment and lateral force,
(6)
and the axial beam deflection is only affected by axial force. The
basic model neglects two higher-order effects, which are taken
into account in the complete model as shown by the two extra (7)

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 QIU et al.: BULK-MICROMACHINED BISTABLE RELAY WITH U-SHAPED THERMAL ACTUATORS 1103

With a small approximation, the moment balance of the con- To clarify the analysis, define the normalized variables
nector beam gives

(8)

A force balance of the connector beam between the hot and cold (16)
beams gives the actuator force as a sum of both hot and cold
beams tip forces, With these normalizations, (14) takes the form
(9)
(17)
The short connector beam is assumed to be a rigid body during
the actuation, so the axial deflection geometric compatibility of
The solution of (17) is
the hot and cold beams gives

Equations (8)–(10) are linear equations, so the tip displacement
is a linear function of tip force. The blocked force and free dis-
placement can be obtained as follows. For simplicity, assume
both initial lengths are equal, and define
Then
(10)
(18)
. Note that the unknown constant does not appear in this so-
lution. Although (18) is highly nonlinear in , it is linear for a
given . As can be seen in the development below, all equations
are linear for a given . This ensures a linear numerical solu-
tion of the actuator behavior with the normalized compression
(11) force acting as a free varying parameter. Equation (18) gives
a constitutive relation at the beam tip of

(12) (19)

(13) and
This completes the simple model, with (11)–(13) summarizing
the behavior of the linear f-d relation.

C. Complete Mechanical Model of Actuator

In the complete model, the lateral deflection is caused by the (20)
lateral force and moment, and also amplified by axial compres-
sion, or deamplified by axial tension. The self-enhancing ampli- The axial deflection of the beam tip is caused by three factors:
fication effect of axial compression is usually more significant the thermal expansion, the axial compression, and the beam
than the self-limiting deamplification effect of axial tension. On shortening caused by the lateral curving of the beam. With a
the other hand, besides thermal strain and Hooke’s law, the axial small deflection assumption, the ratio of the beam shortening
deformation is also determined by the curving of the beam. The by lateral curving to the beam length can be calculated as
two effects shown in Fig. 8(b) are both very nonlinear, which
makes the complete model algebraically complex.
To start the complete model, first consider a beam with sim-
ilar conditions as the hot beam shown in Fig. 7(b). The beam
bending equation used is

(14)

which has the moment contribution of the axial force , ex-

pressed by the first term on the right hand side, as an extra mo-
ment contribution than what is shown in (3). Note that , the
beam tip deflection, is an unknown constant that must be deter-
(21)
mined. The beam tip rotation is

We can now consider the thermal actuator, shown in Fig. 7(a),

(15)
using analytic notation defined in (16)–(21) with the subscripts

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 1104 JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2005

and denoting the hot beam and cold beam as shown in where and are both seven-element vector functions of
Fig. 7(b). To continue the analysis, define . Substitution of (33) into (32) gives a quadratic equation

(22) (34)

that can be solved for . Given , (33) then gives solutions

Next, the two axial forces must have equal value but opposite
for all other variables.
sign so that
Returning to dimensional form, (16) gives

(23) (35)

Equation (23) yields an imaginary for the cold beam, which From a force balance and (16)
means that its force is in tension instead of compression. Note
that (18)–(21) hold for an imaginary too, with all terms in (36)
the equations still reducing to real numbers. Similar to (8), the
moment balance of the connector beam is
Note that (35) and (36) together give the force-displacement
characteristic of the thermal actuator, parametrically over .
(24) Therefore, varying over a reasonable range sweeps the tra-
jectory of the actuator force-displacement characteristic. The
According to and (19) and (20), the constitutive behavior of complete model is implemented in Matlab code. (Readers can
both beam tips is described by email the first author for the code).
Both basic and complete models can be compared with non-
(25) linear FEA to show their effectiveness. A MatLab implementa-
(26) tion of both models gives a result in less than 1 second, while
(27) construction and running of an FEA model usually takes more
than 10 minutes for a specific design. Fig. 9 shows the model
(28)
comparison for a thermal actuator having dimensions described
The geometric constraints of the rigid connector beam are in the figure caption. (Young’s modulus of Si at 220 is very
close to its room temperature value according to [13], [14].) The
complete model agrees very well with the FEA, while the basic
(29) model is only effective over low temperature rise.

(30) D. Electrothermal Model of the Actuator

(31)
In the left hand side of (31), the first term is the thermal strain
(heat expansion) of the hot beam; the terms in the second paren-
thesis are the axial strain for both beams; the terms in the second
parenthesis are the beam shortening effect for both beams; and
the last term is the deflection difference of the two beam tips
caused by the rotation of the connector beam. Note that ex-
cept for the extra terms in the second parenthesis of (31), it is
the same equation as (10). Combining (21) and (31) gives (32)
shown at the bottom of the page. Assuming a given , (23)
gives , and then (24)–(30) are linear equations which can be
summarized by
(33)
The basic actuator design covers the cold beam with metal
to make it more electrically conductive than the hot beam. This
permits differential heating and expansion of the beams as an
electrical current is passed around them to produce the desired
deflection. Heat transfer has three mechanisms: conduction,
convection and radiation. Over the MEMS scale, conduction is
the dominant mechanism. To verify this, the heat transport of
the other two mechanisms can be estimated. Assuming a forced
air convection constant of 100 - , a Stefan-Boltzmann
radiation constant of 5.67e-8 - , a room temperature
of 25 , a hot beam temperature of 220 higher than room
temperature, and a total surface area of the hot beam of 4.6e-6
, the convective power lost is 0.1 W and the radiation power
lost is 0.019 W, both negligible compared to the 50 W dissipa-
tion of electrothermal power generated in the thermal actuator
design described in Fig. 9. To model the thermal operation of
the thermal actuator, it is first important to know how fast the

(32)

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 QIU et al.: BULK-MICROMACHINED BISTABLE RELAY WITH U-SHAPED THERMAL ACTUATORS
Fig. 9. Comparison of thermal actuator model results. (a) Blocked force versus
temperature. (b) Free displacement versus temperature. The U-shaped thermal
m m
actuator has a 6 mm length, an 80  hot beam thickness, a 60  cold beam
m m
thickness, a 20  gap, a 300  width (wafer thickness), and a 169 GPa
Young’s modulus.
heat diffuses by conduction in the silicon structure. A simple
estimate is
(37)
where is the thermal diffusion time, is the thermal
diffusion length, and thermal capacity (or volumetric heat ca-
pacity) and thermal conductivity refer to the values of silicon.
Equation (37) can also be written as
(38)
The electrical pulse used to heat the thermal actuator is
chosen to be 1 ms. Equation (38) states that the thermal diffu-
sion length over 1 ms is 315 , which is much less than 6
mm, the actuator length in the final design. Therefore thermal
diffusion along the beam length is to first order negligible.
Unlike many other thermal actuators, the actuator described
here is a transient one. In this way, uniform temperature is
maintained inside the hot beam and little heat flows into the
cold beam, so the maximum expansion difference between the
beams is obtained. If left excited for more than several ms, the
temperatures of the two beams partially equilibrate and the
actuator retracts. To thermally diffuse through the whole 6 mm
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1105
length of the actuator, (37) states that the required diffusion
time is 0.37 s, which is an estimate of how fast the thermal
actuator can cool down. This is reasonably consistent with the
experimentally measured maximum repetition rate of 5 Hz.
The electrical energy required for actuation is equal to the
heat energy stored inside the hot beam. For the thermal actu-
ator shown in Fig. 9, a heat capacitance calculation estimates
that 50 mJ of electrical energy is needed to heat the hot beam
up by 220 . (The temperature of 220 is chosen based on
the complete model and/or FEA for the desired blocked force
of 13 mN and free deflection of 120 .) The silicon resis-
tivity determines the required excitation voltage and current. If
an actuation voltage of 50 V and pulse width of 1 ms is desired,
the resistivity of the wafer should be chosen as 0.02 ohm-cm.
The corresponding current at actuation is . The metal layer
should provide a much lower electrical resistance than the sil-
icon it covers. Assuming only the top surface is covered by gold,
to have one tenth resistance of the silicon, its thickness is cal-
culated to be 0.35 . This means a 0.35 gold layer should
be enough to provide the high conductance. With this thickness,
approximately equal to one tenth of the heat generated in the hot
beam would be generated in the gold layer. Heat diffusion es-
timation shows that this heat would diffuse across the 300
silicon depth, so the temperature rise in the gold layer would be
one order of magnitude lower than in the hot beam. However,
even with this transient actuator, the heat will still flow from the
hot beam to the cold beam through their connection after the
electrical pulse. So the gold layer near the junction point will
experience a temperature close to that of the hot beam temper-
ature. Failure of the gold layer at the junction was indeed ob-
served during the operation of some of the devices.
A thermal FEA study of the transient conduction in the
thermal actuator described in Fig. 9 was carried out. Both
the hot beam and cold beam have zero temperature boundary
condition at their clamping bases. The connection beam is set
to be 50 wide. 50 W is applied to the whole body of the hot
beam to simulate the ohmic heating, and 1 W is applied to the
top surface (wafer top) of the cold beam to simulate heat source
within its metal coating. The resulting temperature rise profile
at the end of a 1 ms heating pulse is shown in Fig. 10. It can be
seen that the hot beam rises for about 220 degree C and the cold
beam rises for less than 10 degree C. The transition temperature
region at bases and connection ends are much shorter than the
total beam length, which verifies the diffusion estimation by
(38).
E. Dynamics of the Actuation
The mechanical models presented in Sections III-B and C are
static. The thermal actuator is designed to operate in transient
fashion; dynamics exists for the coupled actuator-double beam
system. Due to the component’s high nonlinearity, even the tran-
sient FEA for the double beam alone has convergence problems.
On the other hand, due to the small size of MEMS elements, in-
ertial effects are usually small thus the mechanical system could
be considered quasistatic. To evaluate this, a first order estima-
tion is presented here.
With reference to Fig. 9, the system has a total mass of 6e-7
kg, a block force of 13 mN and a free displacement of 120 .
 1106
Fig. 10. FEA modeling of the transient heating in thermal actuator.
Fig. 11. The actuation pulse (top curve) and resulting contact closure (bottom curve).
To estimate how fast the actuator will bend, we treat it as a single
degree of freedom mass-spring system, with the effective mass
to be its total mass, and the effective spring constant to be its
blocked force divided by its free displacement. The total time
for it to reach fully bent shape, as estimated to be one fourth of
its vibration period, is about 0.12 ms, almost 10 times smaller
than the heating time of 1 ms. The double beam is even faster
considering its mass of more than 10 times smaller than the ac-
tuator. This indicates that the mechanical response of the actu-
ator is much faster than its thermal response, so we can treat the
actuation as a quasistatic mechanical event with the speed dom-
inated by the heating.
Experiments were done to observe the closing speed of the
relay. One relay contact was connected to ground through a re-
sistor, and the other contact was connected to a voltage source.
The potential of the first contact was monitored by a voltmeter,
so that a zero potential indicated an open relay and a high
potential indicated a closed relay. Actuation power of the 1 ms
pulse was ramped up until the relay can be just switched. Fig. 11
shows a typical timing of the actuation and relay closure. As
the figure shows, the first contact occurs less than 0.1 ms after
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JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2005
the down ramp of the actuation pulse, which agrees well with
the dynamic approximation given above (heating dominates
switching speed). Five relays were tested from one fabricated
lot and similar closing phenomena were observed. Among the
relay tested, the first closing occurred 65–75 after the down
ramp of the actuation pulse; the contact lasted for 80–90
before the crossbar bounced back for 400–440 and returned
to close the relay again. Though the timing of the first contact
and bounce were quite consistent, some devices settled to full
contact after the first bounce, while others bounced for 1–4
more times such as shown in Fig. 11. The full bouncing took
between 0.5 to 1.5 ms depending on number of bounces. With
the 1 ms actuation time, the total relay closing time is less than
2.5 ms. Due to the asymmetry of the double beam f-d curve
as shown in Fig. 4, the opening of the relay is faster than its
closing. So the total switching time of the relay is within the
design requirement of 4 ms.
F. Design Procedure of the Actuator-Double Beam System
The actuator must have both enough force and enough dis-
placement to toggle the double beam. To be effective, the ratio
 QIU et al.: BULK-MICROMACHINED BISTABLE RELAY WITH U-SHAPED THERMAL ACTUATORS
of its blocked force over free displacement should be equal to
the negative slope of the double beam f-d curve as shown in
Fig. 4(a). In designing a thermal actuator, (13) can be used first
to quickly identify the ratio of thickness over length, and then
the simple form of (11) assuming equal thicknesses can be used
to determine the length of the thermal actuator. Then, the relative
ratio of thicknesses could be fine tuned with the exact formula
in (11) and (12), or they can be substituted into the complete
model to verify the results.
For practical purposes, the temperature rise in the hot beam
should be kept below 300 degree C. For this temperature range
Fig. 9 shows that the basic model is good enough for predicting
the thermal actuator behavior. However, it must be emphasized
that if the basic model is used without confirmation from the
complete model, a thin-hot-beam (compared to the cold beam)
design could easily become the “optimized” result. Such a de-
sign does not give the desired result even at low temperature,
because the thinner the hot beam compared to the cold beam,
the lower is the temperature range over which the basic model
is effective. It is found that to have an effective transformation
of axial expansion to lateral motion, a hot beam thickness ap-
proximately equal to the cold beam thickness is preferred.
The U-shaped thermal actuator with the dimensions shown in
Fig. 9 is designed to have 13 mN of blocked force and 120
of free deflection at a temperature difference of 220 . This
actuator can actuate the bistable double beam whose f-d curve
is shown in Fig. 4(a). The slightly larger force and displacement
required of the thermal actuator over those of the double beam
are the results of the 20- -etch gap between the actuator and
double beam.
The temperature profile of the thermal actuator, and its
blocked force and free displacement capability during actuation
are difficult to measure experimentally due to the small device
dimensions and the transient nature of the actuation. However,
by ramping the actuation current pulse, it is easy to establish the
minimum energy that causes the actuator to toggle the bistable
structure. The actuation energy determines the temperature rise
of the hot beam in the electrothermal model, and the f-d relation
of the bistable structure determines the blocked force and free
displacement of the actuator. The experimentally measured
minimum energy pulse to toggle the bistable structure is typi-
cally within 20% of the value estimated by the actuator models.
IV. FABRICATION AND TESTING
The MEMS relay shown in Figs. 2 and 5 has been fabri-
cated and successfully tested. The N-type 4-inch silicon wafer
used for fabrication has a typical 0.02 - resistivity, and a
315- thickness. The 4-inch Pyrex handle wafer has a 500-
thickness. In the etch masks for the silicon through etch, fillets
are added at the sharp corners to lower any stress concentra-
tion. Further, a halo is included in the mask, so that the etch
space has the same width throughout the mask. This arrange-
ment ensures that etching occurs at the same rate across all de-
vices. Fast-turnaround and economic mask printing is adopted
for fabrication. The mask pattern is first printed on a trans-
parency by a commercial service with a feature resolution of
about 5 . Then the transparency pattern is transferred to a re-
sist-covered chrome glass plate by photolithography. Finally the
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1107
Fig. 12. Fabrication process flow.
chrome plate is etched and cleaned, ready to be used as a mask.
The time required to turn a mask drawing into a real mask is
two days. For better resolution than 5 , a stepper exposure
process can be used, which has a 10:1 feature reduction capa-
bility from the mask onto the wafer. This improves the resolu-
tion by a factor of ten.
Fig. 12 shows the main fabrication process steps for the relay.
First, a backside shallow pit of about 20 is etched by DRIE
on the device wafer. This backside shallow etch step is designed
to alleviate the bottom etching problem of a DRIE through etch.
Typical DRIE through etching does not yield an ideal etch at the
bottom of the wafer due to footing erosion and footing radius.
The footing erosion refers to the eroded silicon structure at the
bottom by reflected plasma attack on the unprotected silicon;
this reflected plasma is from the adhesion photoresist on the
handle wafer carrying the device wafer being etched through.
The footing radius refers to the thicker feature size at the bottom
due to weakened plasma etching from above. The shallow back-
side etch lifts the bottom of the etch surface, thus effectively
alleviating both problems. It prevents the relay contacts from
making only point contact along their bottom edge. It also helps
increase the fracture strength of the structure by avoiding ero-
sion. Fig. 13 shows SEM pictures of the bottom part of three
pieces of silicon. Without the backside etch, (a) has an eroded
bottom, and (b) has a widened bottom, while with the technique
of backside etching, (c) has a smooth and straight bottom.
Second, the device feature is through-etched by DRIE from
the front side. All isolated parts etched in this step remain
attached to the wafer by break-off tabs so that they do not fall
off. The DRIE etch recipe “MIT69A” was used as developed in
the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) of MIT. The
total time taken to etch through the wafer thickness of 300
was about three hours with a 20 halo. After the DRIE
through etch, it is necessary to remove the Teflon residue from
the DRIE process, and also to smooth the sidewalls for better
metallization results. To do so, a DRIE isotropic etch using
for 20 seconds follows the through etch. A half-hour O plasma
ashing, a 0.5 thermal oxide growth at the temperature of
1100 C, and a BOE (Buffered Oxide Etching) striping of oxide
follows. Experiments with these process steps prove they are
helpful for better metallization adhesion and contact resistance.
 1108
Fig. 13. SEM pictures of DRIE structures at the wafer bottom. (a) Typical footing erosion. (b) Typical footing radius. (c) Smooth bottom fabricated with the
backside shallow etch method.
In the third step, a Pyrex handle wafer receives an optional
shallow etch of 50 to define pits below the device-wafer
components that will move. Fourth, the device wafer is anodi-
cally bonded to the handle wafer. Fifth, a shadow wafer is etched
by DRIE and is placed on top of the device wafer. The device
wafer is sputtered with 100 A of Ti and 1 of Au with the
shadow wafer acting as a mechanical mask. The shadow wafer
is designed so that all sputtered metal on the relay contacts
are wired together. This provides a current path for subsequent
electroplating. The sputtering machine locates the metal source
above the wafer. It does not give metal coverage sufficient for
sidewall contacts; our estimation of the average gold thickness
on the sidewalls is only 10% of that on the top wafer surface.
In the sixth step, about 2 of copper or gold are electro-
plated on the device wafer. The copper plating for example is
from a commercial acid sulfate solution. Periodic pulse plating
with a 5-ms on time and a 1-ms off time is used to improve
the uniformity of the film thickness and sidewall coverage.
The plating was done under constant temperature of 18 C with
mild agitation of the plating solution. The current amplitude
and plating time is determined by the desired plating thickness
and area. In a typical setting, 0.1 A of current lasting for 9 min
plates 2 of Cu on a 10 area. After electroplating,
thorough rinsing and drying is performed to remove any sulfate
from the device to avoid fast oxidation.
After fabrication, the break-off tabs in the device wafer are
manually broken to achieve electrical isolation between device
features, and the relay is ready for testing. Probes electrically
connect the relay. An external source provides pulses for the
thermal actuators. Typically, 1-ms pulses with between 50 and
60 Volt amplitudes are required to actuate the relay, which
agrees well with our thermal actuator model. Thermal relax-
ation limits repeated actuation to approximately 5 Hz. Cycle
tests with 1 Hz actuation have switched the relay 100 000 times,
before the metal on the thermal actuator fails. A four-point
test is performed to measure the total contact resistance; the
best result measured is 60 with a plated Cu thickness of
about 2.5 . The same contact carried 3 A of current without
contact metal failure. The testing of relay switching dynamics
is described in Section III-E and Fig. 11.
V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
This paper proposed, modeled, designed and fabricated an
electrothermally-actuated bistable MEMS relay for power ap-
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JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2005
plications. This paper selected a straightforward deep etch and
bonding fabrication sequence that facilitates the flexure design
of relay components to meet the functional requirements. One
key requirement for this relay is its mechanical bistability, which
was realized with double-curved beam discussed in detail in [1].
To actuate the bistable component, a U-shaped thermal actuator
was selected for its good actuation capability and simple fabrica-
tion. Detailed modeling and design were developed and verified
with FEA. Two mechanical models were created, with the basic
model giving closed-form solutions as shown by (11) and (12),
and the complete model accurately capturing the cross coupling
relation of the beam force and deflection between lateral and
axial directions as shown by (18) and (21). Differential heating
was achieved by coating the cold beam with highly conductive
metal. Electrothermal modeling showed the transient nature of
the electrothermal actuator, which could be actuated by an elec-
trical pulse generated by a specialized external circuit.
For the relay contact, this paper used a crossbar-contact
structure. Different shapes of the contact structure were fabri-
cated and tested, and the flat-flat structure was selected as best.
Crossbar compliance was designed so the crossbar can contact
the two contacts reliably by using a spring action to equalize
both contact forces. To achieve good metallization and contact
through the DRIE sidewalls, a backside shallow etch was used
to alleviate problems at the wafer bottom (footing erosion,
footing radius) that tend to cause undesired point contact be-
tween the crossbar and relay contacts. Several processes were
used to clean the Teflon residue from the DRIE process, which
caused metal adhesion problems. A three-step metallization
process including cleaning, seed metal deposition by sputtering,
and more metal deposition by electroplating was developed.
The current carrying capacity with the electroplated contacts
was about 2–3 A, and the on-state resistance was on the order
of 60 mohm, which are comparable to the best MEMS relays
found in the literature.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Prof M. Schmidt, J. Li,
J. Sihler, K. Broderick, V. Diadiuk, and R. Krishnan of MIT
for helpful discussions and fabrication/testing assistance.
They thank O. Yaglioglu of MIT for reading this paper and
giving helpful comments. They also thank R. Struempler,
S. Kotilainen, and J. Henning of ABB for helpful discussions
and testing assistance.
 QIU et al.: BULK-MICROMACHINED BISTABLE RELAY WITH U-SHAPED THERMAL ACTUATORS
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Jin Qiu (M’04) received the Ph.D. degree in me-
chanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, in 2003, with a
minor in business. His doctoral project was ranked as
the top one among 20 others by its industry sponsor.
He also received the B.S. degree in electrical en-
gineering from Nanjing University in 1997 and the
M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from MIT in
1999.
He is with WiSpry, Inc., Irvine, CA, working on RF
MEMS. Previously, he was with Tyco Electronics.
He has one issued patent and several others pending. His interests focus on the
development of MEMS, semiconductor devices, and instruments.
Dr. Qiu is a Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
(ASME).
Authorized licensed use limited to: GHULAM ISHAQ KHAN INST OF ENG SCI AND TECH. Downloaded on January 9, 2009 at 14:09 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1109
Jeffrey H. Lang (S’78–M’79–SM’95–F’98) re-
ceived the S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), Cambridge, in 1975, 1977, and
1980, respectively.
Currently, he is a Professor of Electrical Engi-
neering at MIT. He has been an MIT faculty member
since receiving his Ph.D. degree and his research
and teaching interests focus on the analysis, design,
and control of electromechanical systems with
an emphasis on rotating machinery, microsensors
and actuators, and flexible structures. He has written over 160 papers and
holds 10 patents in the areas of electromechanics, power electronics, and
applied control.
Dr. Lang and has been awarded four Best Paper prizes from various IEEE
societies. He is a former Hertz Foundation Fellow and a former Associate Editor
of Sensors and Actuators.
Alexander H. Slocum (M’03) received the Ph.D.
degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology (MIT), Cambridge, while simultaneously
working from 1983 to 1985 at the National Bureau of
Standards, where he also earned 12 superior service
awards and a Department of Commerce Medal.
He is currently a Professor of Mechanical En-
gineering at MIT and a MacVicar Faculty Fellow.
He has about 60 patents issued/pending and he
designs manufacturing equipment for the automo-
tive, aerospace, semiconductor, and entertainment
industries. He has been involved in several manufacturing equipment company
start-ups, and he has helped many different companies bring many different
machines to the marketplace. In addition, he has also been involved with nine
products that have been awarded R&D 100 awards, each for annually being one
of one hundred most technologically significant new products. His research
has involved three dozens Ph.D. students. His current interests focus on the
development of instruments, MEMS, and nanotechnology.
Dr. Slocum is the recipient of the Society of Manufacturing Engineer’s Fred-
erick W. Taylor Research Medal and is a Fellow of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
Alexis C. Weber received the B.S. degree in me-
chanical and electrical engineering from Instituto
Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
(ITESM-CEM), Mexico, and the M.S. degree in
mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, in
2002. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in
mechanical engineering at MIT.
From 1999 to 2003, he was employed by Delphi
Corporation, where he designed electromagnetic ac-
tuators for automotive applications. His research in-
terests include design, modeling and fabrication of microelectromechancial sys-
tems (MEMS), as well as macroscale precision machine design.
Mr. Weber is a Member of Sigma Xi.