Charge distribution on narrow MEMS beams of nearly square cross-section

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the calculation of charge distribution on the surfaces of thin conducting microelectromechanical systems beams, of nearly square cross-section, in electrostatic problems, by the boundary element method (BEM). A line model of a beam is proposed here. This model overcomes the problem of dealing with nearly singular matrices that occur when the standard BEM is applied to very thin features (objects or gaps). This new approach is also very efficient. Numerical results are presented for selected examples. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.