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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2015
This note presents an elasto-capillary model of a cantilever subject to capillary stiction during drying process of removing sacrificial layers in MEMS. Similar to the dynamic analysis of the electrostatic pull-in of electrostatic micro actuators, the cantilever beam tends to be pulled down to the substrate due to the nonlinear capillary force with respect to the gap. The critical one-half gap deformation and the corresponding critical wetting area for pulling down a micro cantilever by surface tension are analytically found herein. The instability situation of a generalized critical deformation for power-law surface force with respect to gap is also predicted accordingly. Some prior MEMS works are exemplified to justify this critical one-half gap deformation for capillary stiction.