Real-time characterization of dielectric charging in contactless capacitive MEMS

This paper presents a new method to characterize the dynamics of the charge trapped in the dielectric layer of contactless microelectromechanical systems. For sampled-time systems, this allows knowing the state of the net charge at each sampling time without distorting the measurement. This approach allows one to model the expected behaviour of dielectric charging as a response to a sigma–delta control of charge. The goodness of the proposed approach is obtained by matching the experimentally obtained closed loop response with the one predicted using the proposed characterization method. The characterization method also provides a criterion to avoid nonlinear effects, such as fractal-like behaviour, in charge control.

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