Improvement in capacitive performances of efficient micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) based power inverter

• Main Authors: Ralli Sangno, R.K. Mehta, Santanu Maity
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2018-01-01
• Series: Cogent Engineering
• Subjects: mems; actuator; inverter; miniaturization; solar cell
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311916.2018.1455407

In this paper different electrostatic interdigitated comb designs for the new concept of MEMS based DC–AC capacitive power inverter for the solar photovoltaic applications has been compared and tested on the basis of different structures and materials used as a frame for the proposed model. To obtain better the performance and power conversion efficiency of the interdigitated comb drive capacitive DC/AC inverter at very low input voltage some structural parameters of the proposed model has been varied such as increase the number of comb fingers; reduced the gap between the fingers of the interdigitated comb with increase in thickness of the fingers and made uniformly tapered at its edges. As a structural material for the proposed model the polysilicon and indium antimonite has been employed, simulated, compared and tested and in COMSOL Metaphysics 5.0 environment with different comb structure to get better performances for solar photo voltaic application. The proposed MEMS DC/AC power inverter model can easily compete with the commercially available semiconductor inverters once it is implemented with efficient fabrication technology due to its certain merits over semiconductor power inverter in terms of miniaturized size, pure sinusoidal output voltage and current, regulated output frequency, ultra low power consumption, very low cost and off course very small or minimal power loss.