Carbon nanotube vertical membranes for electrostatically actuated micro-electro-mechanical devices

In this work, we investigate vertically aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) membranes as building blocks to realize electrostatically actuated micro-electro-mechanical-systems (M EMS). The fabricated CNT dense arrays are grown on adjacent metal electrodes and can be actuated by applying a DC bias. The conductive membranes deflect when actuated and a clear pull-in is observed, as in any conventional MEM device using metal parallel plates. The Young's modulus of these membranes extracted from the pull-in voltage is in the range of 10s of MPa. S-parameter measurements for different actuation voltage shows a reduction in the insertion loss between the two electrodes with the increase in DC bias, indicating a change of the device capacitance. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.