Passivated Electrode Actuator with Stable Resonance Amplitude

In this paper we demonstrate how parametric resonant excitation of a surface drive actuator with dielectric coated electrodes makes the response amplitude independent of the driving force. This behavior can be beneficially utilized to maintain constant excitation amplitude in spite of time-varying charge screening on dielectric passivated electrodes and the associated actuation force decay. Such operation makes the device suitable for applications where constant amplitude operation is critical, such as driving vibratory rate gyroscopes.