A Micromachined Electrostatic Field Sensor with Vertical Thermal Actuator

This paper presents a micromachined electrostatic field sensor with U-shaped vertical thermal actuators. The sensor is fabricated with a standard surface micromachining process and the area of the sensor is less than 2.5 mm times 2.5 mm. We tested the sensor with low driving voltages of +0.6 V, and a high resolution of 200 V/m has been achieved by the sensor.