Ultra High performance In-line Contact MEMS RF Switch

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An in-line direct RF MEMS Switch was presented in this paper. This switch having single contact point was fabricated, and characterized. The switch is a series type and is actuated by a supportive membrane. A membrane acts as an electrostatic actuator, and the movable signal line is attached to the center of the membrane. In this design, a membrane was divided into an electrode part consisting of SiN/Al/SiN and a signal line part having SiN/Al/SiN/Au layers. This makes the switch have ultra high RF performance. First, the electrode part was pull down but the signal part was not yet contacted onto the bottom electrode because the spring constant of signal line part is stronger. Next, the total structure was pulled down when higher voltage was applied. FEA with ANSYS was performed to design the switch and two kind of pull-down motion also was verified in the analysis of electrostatic analysis. The actuation voltage was 13V. The insertion loss of -0.06 dB, the isolation of -35.4 dB at 2 GHz was measured.

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Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: 3, Technical Proceedings of the 2006 NSTI Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Show, Volume 3
Published: May 7, 2006
Pages: 389 - 392
Industry sector: Sensors, MEMS, Electronics
Topic: MEMS & NEMS Devices, Modeling & Applications
ISBN: 0-9767985-8-1