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An electrostatically actuated broadband ohmic microswitch has been developed that has applications from DC through the microwave region. The microswitch is a 3-terminal device based on a cantilever beam and is fabricated using an all-metal, surface micromachining process. It operates in a hermetic environment obtained through a waferbonding process. Characteristics of the wafer-level packaged switch include DC on-resistance of less than 1 Ohm with an actuation voltage of 80 V, lifetime of greater than 10'' cycles with on-resistance variation of less than 0 3 Ohm and cnrrent handling capability of 1 Ampere. Key RF characteristies at 2 GHz include an insertion loss of 0.32 dB and isolation of 33 dB for our 4-contact microswitch Preliminary measurements at higher microwave freqnencies are extremely promising with full characterization and planned product improvements underway.

An electrostatically actuated broadband ohmic microswitch has been developed for RF and microwave applications. The switch is a three-terminal device based on a cantilever beam and is fabricated using an all-metal, surface-micromachining process. It operates in a hermetic environment obtained through a glass frit wafer-bonding process. RF lifetimes greater than 10 10 cycles have been achieved for the wafer capped switch. Typical insertion loss and isolation for a 2-contact switch at 10 GHz are 0.4 and 20 dB, respectively, while the 8-contact switch yields an insertion loss and isolation of 0.2 dB and 27 dB at 2 GHz, respectively.

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