Sensors and Actuators A, 25-27 (1991) 597-603
Design of an Integrated Electrostatic Stepper Motor with Axial Field
L. PARATTE, G.-A. RACINE and N. F. DE ROOIJ
Institute of Microlechnology, Universi?y of Neuch&el, Rue A.-L. Breguer 2, CH-2069 Neuchcjrel (Switzerland)
E. BORNAND
Asulab S.A., R +D Laboratories of SMH Group, Passage Max-Meuron
Abstract
A variable capacitance, top-drive syn-
chronous, electrostatic stepper motor model
is presented. A surface micromachining tech-
nique is proposed for its fabrication. Simple
theoretical modelling predicts that the Cou-
lomb dry friction torque dominates the vis-
cous and inertial torques over a large speed
range. Dry friction coefficient values between
thin-film-covered silicon chips have been
measured by means of a pin-on-disc tribome-
ter machine from CSEM S.A. Values between
0.3 and 0.4 have been found for LPCVD
silicon nitride on LPCVD polysilicon, polysil-
icon on itself and silicon nitride on itself, in
agreement with previous work. This result
shows that a material pair with better friction
behaviour still has to be found.
Introduction
Polysilicon film deposition over a sacrifi-
cial silicon dioxide layer appears to be a
promising micromachining technique for
building motors having disc-shaped rotors
with typical dimensions of hundreds of pm in
diameter of l-2 pm thickness [2,3,5]. When
motors are shrunk down in size, electrostatic
is preferred to electromagnetic drive because
the heat losses due to current in the coils
increase [ 11. Moreover, micrometer-sized
gaps sustain high field values (Paschen’s law),
as reported elsewhere [2] and confirmed by
measurements made on movable aluminium
structures. This motor is a variable capaci-
0924-4247/91/%3.50
597
6, CH-2001 NeuchBtel (Switzerland)
tance (VC), synchronous stepper motor with
stator electrodes deposited underneath the ro-
tor (top drive). Field lines in the air gaps are
globally axially oriented. In this motor type,
the sacrificial layer technique provides more
uniform and smaller air gaps, and the planar
geometry leads to larger VC facing areas.
This results in an increased capacitance
change rate, and hence an .increased motor
torque. The absence of peripheral stators
makes adjacent coupling to a driven mecha-
nism easy. But under electrostatic attraction,
the rotor teeth will bend downwards, and
even switch down to contact the base plane if
a certain ‘pull-in’ voltage is applied, thus
preventing any rotation from taking place.
Moreover this attraction force becomes larger
as the rotor and stator align, causing the dry
friction torque to increase drastically. In the
following study, a three-polysilicon-layer fab-
rication process for this motor will be de-
scribed first, followed by a simple analytical
model and a numerical example which takes
into account the most significant parameters.
The importance of the dry dynamic friction
coefficient will be outlined. Finally, a friction
measurement set-up and measurement results
will be presented.
Fabrication
The fabrication is based on the surface
micromachining technique available in our
laboratory and documented in ref. 10. The
fabrication steps are shown for a half-motor
cross section in Fig. 1, the dashed line being
0 Elsevier Sequoia/Printed in The Netherlands
598

rotor axis 2nd SiO2 th si (n) 1st SiO2 th

I knd plane)
formed through phosphorus-doped oxide de-
I I
position (CVD) and 1100 “C drive-in. After
removal of that doping layer, electrical isola-
tion to the substrate is obtained with a sec-
ond thermal oxide. (b) A first silicon nitride
(4
layer is deposited (LPCVD), followed by a
first polysilicon layer (LPCVD) which is
2nd LPCVD 1st LPCVD Poly-Si 1st LPCVD
I
I SiN (stator electmdes) SiN doped in the same way as for the bulk silicon
under (a). The stator electrodes are then
defined with a dry SF6/02 plasma etching of
the polysilicon with etch-stop on the first
nitride. A second nitride layer is deposited.
;b) (c) A first sacrificial PSG (phosphosilicate
glass) layer is deposited and reflowed at
2nd LPCVD Poly-Si 1st PSG 1100 “C for surface smoothing, unless the
sharp steps of the stator electrodes will repro-
duce their image in the rotor. The rotor
bushing spacer negatives are opened, then
‘refilled’ with a small CVD oxide, otherwise
the rotor would stick to the second nitride
when released. The rotor is defined with
plasma etching, and remaining open-surface
3rd LPCVD Poly-Si
PSG is removed by wet etching. (d) A second
2nd PSG
II sacrificial PSG layer is deposited and the
I
openings to the ground planes are wet and
plasma etched. A third polysilicon layer is
deposited and the rotor bearing is patterned
with plasma etching. At that stage a drive-in
from the sacrificial PSG is performed for the
(4 doping of the two polysilicon layers. (e) The
open-surface sacrificial PSG is removed by
I
I Aluminium wet etching, and the metal contacts to stator
I (bonding)
I
I
lands are opened with plasma etching. Metal-
I
lization and its patterning is performed, and
finally the rotor is released through long wet
I etching of the remaining PSG.
I

(e)
Fig. I. Simplified fabrication process sequence of the
electrostatic motor with axial field.
the rotation axis. The aspect ratio of the
cross section has been modified for presenta-
tion purposes. (a) The silicon wafers (3”, 100
orientation, p-type, resistivity = 5 -7 Szcm)
are oxidized, and a ground plane region act-
ing as an electrostatic shield [6] is opened
with BHF. N-doping of the region is per-
Modelling
A geometrical motor model is shown in
Fig. 2(a). If a voltage V is applied across one
phase (one pair of diametrically opposed sta-
tor teeth), the rotor teeth tend to align to it.
Continuous rotation of the rotor is obtained
by switching V to the next adjacent phase,
causing the rotor to turn in the same or
opposite direction, depending on the number
and width of the stator and rotor teeth. The

A-A y+ .g Top view
(4
W (4
Fig. 2. (a) Geometrical motor model. (b) Motor and
friction torques vs. rotor position. (c) Tooth flexure
characteristics.
following assumptions will be made for the
modelling: (1) The rotor is electrically con-
ductive. (2) The current at the rotor due to
charge transfer is negligible. (3) The viscous
torque is mainly due to the laminar Couette
flow of the air between the rotor and the base
plane [4]. (4) No significant charges are gen-
erated through friction. (5) The friction
forces between two surfaces in contact are
only proportional to the normal contact force
(Coulomb friction). (6) All calculations are
made for one phase. (7) The relative dielec-
tric constant of the air is assumed to be one.
The Newton motion law, 1, J2~/8t2 = C M
with I, being the rotor inertia and I: M the
total torque, in our case where a constant
voltage is applied (see Fig. 2) becomes
599
where C, &p/& = A4, is the viscous friction
torque due to air flow. The dry friction
torque Mf and motor torque M,,, can be
calculated by taking the derivative of the
capacitance energy W = CV2/2 stored in the
air gaps with relation to axial and angular
displacements:
(2)
M,,, = -sgn(cp)$
V22 (R,2 - R:) (3)
where p is the dynamic (we assume decelera-
tion until standstill) dry friction coefficient
between the rotor and stator, co is the permit-
tivity in vacuum and all other parameters are
as shown in Fig. 2. In fact, the practical
motor torque will not show an abrupt change
at cp = 0 because the fringing effects near that
aligned position cause the real capacitance to
decrease as described in ref. 1 and numeri-
cally simulated in ref. 3 (Fig. 2(b)). Typically
this effect will appear when the teeth align to
twice the air gap distance. Because the rotor
teeth edges are not parallel to the stator ones
if not aligned, we calculate an average angle
qd near cp = 0 where the motor torque begins
to decrease:
qd = 4d/(& + 4 1 (4)
Hence, the motor torque between -(Pi and
(Pdcan be considered as a linear function of cp
and is expressed as
M,= -~ ~~(Rt-R’)(R.+Ri)‘p (5)
The viscous coefficient C, can be calculated
from the laminar Couette air flow model
between two adjacent planes over the rotor
geometry by integration [4]:
1
(6)
where qair is the viscous coefficient for air. By
replacing eqns. (2), (3) and (5) in eqn. (I),
the general solution for the step motion q(t)
600
is found to be
q(t) = exp( - C, t/21,)[A exp( KU)
+B exp(-Rt)] + C
with
where A, B and C are integration constants
which depend on the starting position of the
rotor. We have k = k, - k2 for 0 < cp <(Pi
(linear motor torque region) and k = -k2 for
(Pd< q < 0, (constant motor torque region)
with the following relations taken from eqns.
(2) and (3):
1 (13)
k, = 32 V 24Jd’ (R: - R?)(R, + Ri)
(motor spring constant) (9)
k,=;pRJ’$(R:-Rf)
(dry friction constant) (10)
If the root argument of eqn. (8) is >O, we
have an over-damped motion. The term in
square brackets in eqn. (7) becomes a hyper-
bolic sine function of Qt. If the root argument
is negative, we have an under-damped, sinu-
soidal motion. The first condition is in fact
always satisfied, because when the tooth is still
in the constant torque domain, we have
k = -k, so the root argument of eqn. (8) is
always positive. When entering the linear
torque region, the motor effective torque
M,,, - Mf decreases even faster. It follows that
the motion is completely overdamped by the
dry friction term. When the rotor has a contin-
uous rotation it is possible to estimate a speed
LJq/at,-,itwhere the viscous friction equals the
dry friction by simply writing
G/&t = Mn/C” (11)
For operating speeds below a user-determined
fraction of the speed given by eqn. (ll), we
can describe the rotor equilibrium position
cp = (Pi when solving the simplified eqn. (1)
M, = Mf with eqns. (1) and (2):
This shows that the rotor-stator electrode
overlap angle is independent of the tooth
width &. This indicates that one has to re-
duce the tooth width to obtain a better align-
ment, but also has to multiply the phase
number. A remarkable fact is that the equi-
librium position does not depend upon phase
voltage or tooth radii R, and Ri. The angle (P~
has to be small enough in order that the next
adjacent phase just ‘catches’ the rotor, and
that there is no reversal of the motion. These
two conditions of proper step-by-step opera-
tion can be expressed in terms of (P_ tooth
width 8, and rotor and stator teeth numbers
n, and n, as
(14)
We want to prevent the teeth ends from
touching the substrate when the phase is en-
ergized and for cp = 0. In general, the solving
of the elastic curve differential equation for
electrostatically deformed planar elements is
rather complex, because the distributed elec-
trostatic force is a function of the deflection.
The analytical solution has already been in-
vestigated [9]. Here we will consider a simpler
model. First, the deflection is symmetrical so
one tooth of the two can be modelled, as
shown in cross section A-A of Fig. 2. We
assume that the rotor ring part (R, to Ri) is
rigid. We have here the case of a simply fixed
beam (cantilever) with variable section width.
We will consider a rectangular beam of
length R, - Ri and width erRi. The tooth
is supposed to be uniformly loaded with a
distributed electrostatic charge having a re-
sultant of Fz/2 in its middle. This approxima-
tion can be made here considering that in
reality the higher electrostatic force due to
the inclination of the tooth down to a maxi-
mum of a half gap is compensated by the
greater mechanical restoration force F, due to
the tooth width variation. We will consider
the displacement d at the end of the tooth,
which we assume to be about three times
bigger (after the drawing of the elastic curve
 601

under distributed load [ 111) than at its mid-

dle, in order to compare with the maximum
end deflection d,, - d given for the mechanical
restoration force. We have the following ex-
pressions for the resultants at the middle of
the tooth as a function of the end deflection d
and for cp = 0:
F 1 Eo
1=-- (RZ - Rf)& (15)
2 16 vz($d,,+$d)2

F, = 3 (;‘lR;;, (do -d) (16)

I
where E is the Young’s modulus of polysili-
con. Figure 2(c) shows eqns. ( 15) and (16) as
a function of d, with the phase voltage V as
parameter. The intersections show stable and
unstable equilibrium points. When the
voltage is increased, the hyperbola Fz/2(d)
moves up until it is a tangent to F*(d). At this
point, the tooth will suddenly clip down in
contact with the substrate. This voltage will
be called the pull-in voltage VPi.

Numerical Example
We choose R, = 100 pm. Currently de-
posited sacrificial layer thicknesses lead to air
gaps of typically d = 1.5 pm. A reasonable
d.c. phase voltage is V = 50 V so we have a
nominal electrostatic field of 16.7 V/pm (six
times below the maximum of 100 V/pm, see
[2] and measurement results). We choose to
have a 12:8 stator:rotor number, where the
pole width is 0, = 20”. p is assumed to be
between 0.2 and 0.5. The layout design con-
strains the minimum rotor hole radius Ri, to
about 30 pm. In order to still have a good
rigidity of the ring part (R, to Ri), we are
bound to have Ri = 60 pm. The bushing ra-
dius is between Ri and &: R, = 50 pm.
First, the critical speed at which the vis-
cous and dry friction torques are equal is
calculated with eqns. (3), (6), ( 11) and is
found to be only J(P/dtc,i, = 280000 rpm, the
viscosity of the air at ambient T and P being
qair= 1.8 x 10e5 kg/m s. The equilibrium po-
sition rp, is calculated with eqn. (12) as shown
0 0.5 1.5
Air gap d (pmf
(b)
Fig. 3. Numerical motor example: (a) rotor static equi-
librium olihet angle, (b) axial deflection equilibrium
position for a 200 pm diameter rotor.
in Fig. 3(a), and is 11.4” for p = 0.2 and 16.6
for ~1=0.5. This motor does not fulfil the
forward operating condition of eqn. ( 13)
where (Pi should be <5”, nor the no-reversal
condition of eqn. (14) where (Pi should be
Q lo”. The following maximum ratings are
calculated for the aligned position rp = 0,
hence the phase capacitance is C,,, = 3.3 fF,
the maximum motor torque is M,,, =
11.8 pN m, the axial force is F= = 2.7 pN, the
maximum dry friction torque is M,=
27.4 pN m for p = 0.2. The axial equilibrium
deflections of the tooth extremity at 50 V and
200 V are calculated with eqns. ( 15) and ( 16)
and plotted in Fig. 3(b), the Young’s mod-
ulus for polysilicon being E = .1.7 x 10” N/
m* [7]. It can be observed that the teeth are
602
still very stiff under 50 V, and that no pull-in
voltage seems to exist from that structure
below a phase voltage of at least 250 V.
Dry Friction Measurements
Silicon wafers have been processed in the
same way as for the motor contact layers (see
Fabrication). Thin films of LPCVD silicon
nitride and polysilicon have been deposited,
then chips have been cut to appropriate di-
mensions. A pin-on-disc machine from
CSEM S.A. (see Fig. 4) has been used for the
friction measurement. Previous measure-
ments have also been made with the same
principle [S]. A vertical force of N = 1 New-
ton is applied on a 4.7 x 4.7 mm’ silicon chip
(material l), corresponding to approximately
double the pressure calculated for the proto-
motorised “ppzr wafer
lower wafer
turntable with
F,=pN
t
Fig. 4. Schematics of the dry friction coefficient mea-
surement set-up using a pin-on-disc tribometer from
CSEM.
type motor (four bushings of 8 pm x 8 ,um
each). The sample is offset from the tum-
table centre by Y= 15 mm. Two-thirds of a 3”
silicon wafer (material 2) is glued to the
turntable. The lower sample is spun from 0 to
2 rpm, corresponding to a rotational speed of
the numerical example motor of 0 to
600 rpm. The friction force Ff causes the arm
to bend laterally, which deformation is sensed
with an induction coil. Appropriate electron-
ics deliver a voltage proportional to the force,
which is recorded on an x-t plotter. Initially,
we have a peak value due to higher static
friction. During rotation, the speed is in-
creased to 2 rpm. All wafer parts and chips
have been rinsed in acetone and isopropanol,
and dried with nitrogen prior to testing. We
counted every run which did not exhibit vis-
ible wear scars on the chips, indicating that
we measured proper dry friction and not
some unknown grinding. There are not
upper sample
enough data to permit a better distinction
holder between the various materials. Nevertheless,
we can already state that one material on
itself is not a good solution. The nitride was
harder because it left scars on the other sam-
ples. Sometimes the static coefficient was
lower than the dynamic one, as indicated
clearly by the absence of stick-slip. A strong
variation of the coefficient within the same
material category, even if issued from the
same wafer, has been observed. Dynamic fric-
tion coefficients of 0.35 f 0.10 for polysilicon
on nitride, 0.40 & 0.10 for polysilicon on itself
and 0.30 + 0.10 for nitride on itself has been
measured over approximately five runs. Pre-
vious work [5] reported friction coefficient
values of 0.21 and 0.38 for polysilicon on
itself from measurements and modelling on a
side-drive VC motor. This can be in agree-
ment with the value found here: the difference
may be explained by the effect of a smoother
contact surface in the case of the motor.
Conclusions
Theoretical considerations show that for
this electrostatic motor architecture, the dry

friction dominates the other effects (inertia,
viscous drag) to the point that no oscillation
around the equilibrium position is expected
at any rotating speed or voltage. A minimum
set of orthogonal values (0,, rzsrn,, R,, p, d)
determines completely the rotor behaviour,
which is more static than dynamic. The mea-
surement of a high dynamic friction co-
efficient value of up to 0.5 shows that the
motor according to the numerical example
would not turn. Either the motor geometry
has to be optimized with relation to the
equations developed, or a pair of low-friction
materials needs to be found. The simple
method presented for the measurement of
the friction coefficient is interesting for a
quick comparison between thin-film covered
chips.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank M. Mail-
lat from the tribology laboratory of CSEM,
Switzerland, for assistance with the friction
measurements on the tribometer, and C.
Borgeaud from EPF-Lausanne, Switzerland,
for interesting and helpful discussions about
dry friction. S. Jeanneret, P.-A. Clerc and C.
Linder from our IMT group provided techni-
cal assistance and discussion of some fabrica-
tion process steps. R. Vuilleumier from
CSEM is acknowledged for the measure-
ments of the electrostatic breakdown voltage
of air on aluminium movable structures. We
finally acknowledge the financial support of
the Committee for the Promotion of Applied
Scientific Research, Switzerland.
603
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