A metal micromechanical resonant switch for on-chip power applications

Abstract

A micromechanical resonant switch, or "resoswitch" (c.f., Fig. 1), constructed in nickel metal rather than previously used polysilicon attains a switch FOM >50 THz, which is several times higher than so far attained by power FET devices and pin diodes. Here, the use of metal reduces the "on" resistance of the resoswitch to less than 1Ω, allowing it to generate 17.7dB of sustained electrical power gain at 25MHz when embedded in a simple switched-mode power amplifier circuit, marking the first successful demonstration of RF power gain using a micromechanical resonant switching device. The high FOM of this device may soon permit the near 100% efficiency predicted for Class-E switched-mode power amplifiers that has eluded transistor-based versions for decades. This in turn would greatly extend battery lifetimes for portable wireless communications and other applications.

Cyclic steady states of nonlinear electro-mechanical devices excited at resonance

“…Such on-chip resonators or dynamic switches show high potential for the replacement of transistors, for example for power-amplification, because of their superior quality factors (low damping properties) [3,4,61,62]. The system is similar to the resonance switch (resoswitch) in the work by [1]. As sketched in Figure 7, we assume that the driving electrodes are operated at a periodic input voltage V i , and the resulting capacitive force brings the disk into a resonant vibration mode.…”

“…As particular examples, we mention the recent micro-mechanical resonant switch (reso-switch) by [1] and the nanotube radio by [2]. Other examples include MEMS resonators or the electro-mechanical charge pump as in [3,4] and references therein.…”

“…Here, we limit ourselves for simplicity of presentation to the purely Dirichlet boundary value problem along . Please refer to [30] for a more general discussion of (1) and alternate boundary conditions. The variational form for (1) reads: Findˆ2 P s , such that Z R R rıˆ rˆdv C…”

RF MEMS for channelizing low-power radios

“…ps, higher frequency resosfor realizing amplification s and their associated quiesed in [21], the resoswitch is omechanical resonator, but acement gain made possible and structural design, e.g., s and a coupling beam [22]; igned to actually impact an tion. If the resonator and nductive materials, this imw loss switch with a very slope, many times steeper uctor switch.…”

Performance optimization of high order RF microresonators in the presence of squeezed film damping

“…In signal processing applications, the steep slopes of the frequency response near the resonant frequency of a microresonator help realize narrow bandpass filters [7,8]. Recently, researchers have demonstrated novel applications for microresonators where they have been used as switches and power converters [9,10].…”