Driver System Eases Control Of MEMS Engines

Allowing easy, accurate control of electrostatic actuator-driven engines, MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) are finding applications in airbag deployment systems, ink-jet printers, laser beam mirror-positioning systems, and a variety of medical applications. Each requires unique waveforms and a system to convert these arbitrary waveforms into electrical signals suitable to meet the drive requirements. The 9014 MEMS driver system includes Sandia National Laboratories' Super µDriver software, plus two or more arbitrary waveform generators, and a multi-channel MEMS amplifier. The software permits the easy creation of the waveforms needed to drive MEMS devices. It enables long, complex waveform sequences to be created and modified without writing any code. Once the files are downloaded into the ARB generators, the system may be operated independently of the PC.