Analysis of a Model for Electrical Discharge in MEMS

We study the local well-posedness of the solution to a coupled nonlinear elliptic-parabolic system which models electrical discharge in a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS). A simple MEMS capacitor device contains two plates acting as the capacitor's electrodes, one of which is flexible, and which are separated by a narrow gas-filled gap. In the event of the flexible plate approaching the other, electrical discharge can occur. This is modelled here by two parabolic equations, for densities of electrons and positive ions, and an elliptic equation for electric potential. We show the local-in-time existence of a weak solution for the coupled system. Compactness techniques, used previously in the study of drift-diffusion equations, are employed in our proof.