For parallel plates, Paschen's law is your friend.  The often-quoted DC
ionization potential for air (3 megavolts/meter) does not hold true when
length scales shrink to the MEMS regime.

For comb drive actuators the estimation may be more complicated because of
points of high curvature, i.e. outside corners, and the corresponding
fluctuations in the electric field (think about why lightning rods always
terminate in sharp points).

Good luck,

Brian Stahl

--
Brian C. Stahl
Graduate Student Researcher
UCSB Materials Research Laboratory
brian.stahl@gmail.com / bstahl@mrl.ucsb.edu
Cell: (805) 748-5839
Office: MRL 3117A


On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Yoshi.Sakata_Gmail
wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I'm going to estimate the breakdown voltage of both the parallel plate type
> actuator and comb drive actuator. Anybody have the idea to estimate?
> Thanks,
>
> Yoshi