Charging in Dielectricless Capacitive RF-MEMS Switches

Mardivirin, David; Pothier, A.; Crunteanu, Aurelian; Vialle, B.; Blondy, Pierre

doi:10.1109/tmtt.2008.2008965

Cited by 69 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Some suggested solutions in the literature, for instance, are tailor-made actuation voltage shapes (pulsed or bi-polar) to reduce charge build-up [19,20], reduced actuation voltage to minimize the field strength in the dielectric [19,20] and dielectrics with fast charging recovery time like diamond [21][22][23]. Dielectric-less designs, using metal stoppers for isolation, e.g., is a promising alternative to the conventional solutions [24][25][26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microwave MEMS devices designed for process robustness and operational reliability

Sterner

Somjit

Shah

et al. 2011

Int. J. Microw. Wireless Technol.

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, antti ra ¤isa ¤nen 2 and joachim oberhammer 1 This paper presents an overview on novel microwave micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) device concepts developed in our research group during the last 5 years, which are specifically designed for addressing some fundamental problems for reliable device operation and robustness to process parameter variation. In contrast to conventional solutions, the presented device concepts are targeted at eliminating their respective failure modes rather than reducing or controlling them. Novel concepts of MEMS phase shifters, tunable microwave surfaces, reconfigurable leaky-wave antennas, multi-stable switches, and tunable capacitors are presented, featuring the following innovative design elements: dielectric-less actuators to overcome dielectric charging; reversing active/passive functions in MEMS switch actuators to improve recovery from contact stiction; symmetrical anti-parallel metallization for full stress-control and temperature compensation of composite dielectric/metal layers for free-standing structures; monocrystalline silicon as structural material for superior mechanical performance; and eliminating thin metallic bridges for high-power handling. This paper summarizes the design, fabrication, and measurement of devices featuring these concepts, enhanced by new characterization data, and discusses them in the context of the conventional MEMS device design.Keywords: RF MEMS, Reliability, MEMS design, Phase shifter, Tuneable capacitor, MEMS switch [12]. In general, RF MEMS devices are characterized by near-ideal signal handling performance in terms of insertion loss, isolation, linearity, large tuning range, and by keeping these performance parameters over a very large bandwidth [4,13]. I . I N T R O D U C T I O NMicrowave MEMS are RF MEMS devices that operate with signal frequencies above 30 GHz. With applications moving to higher frequencies, the performance advantages of MEMS devices over their competitors are getting larger. Also, at frequencies where the signal wavelengths are getting closer to the device dimensions, it is possible to miniaturize a complete RF system on a chip, and different ways of interaction between the microwave signals and the micromechanics lead to new possibilities of RF MEMS devices [47].Operational reliability, i.e. the ability of devices to work as specified over the whole lifetime, and robustness to process parameter variations, are key issues in RF MEMS design [14,48].Conventional RF MEMS designs are still characterized by some fundamental problems. Thin metallic bridges, for instance, found in many RF MEMS devices, such as switches and phase shifters, are susceptible to temperature-accelerated creep and fatigue, limiting the device life-time [14]. In contrast, monocrystalline silicon is a very robust MEMS structural material that is at the same time also suitable as RF dielectric material if high-resistivity silicon (HRS) is used [15,49].

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microwave MEMS devices designed for process robustness and operational reliability

Sterner

Somjit

Shah

et al. 2011

Int. J. Microw. Wireless Technol.

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“…Maximum power which is incident to the switch gets reflected back [14]. So as the literature predicts, if the operating frequency is taken on Xaxis and the transmission coefficients along Y-axis, then the graph should be an ascending curve.…”

Section: Return Loss Of Off-statementioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Simulation of an RF-MEMS Switch and analysis of its Electromagnetic aspect in realtion to stress

Riaz¹,

Sindhu²,

Zaidi³

2018

Adv. sci. technol. eng. syst. j.

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“…5,6 Monitoring the pull-in voltage shift is a commonly used method to characterize dielectric reliability. [7][8][9][10][11] It has been widely applied to different device architectures 9,11 fabricated using varied dielectrics 7,8,10 and processing conditions. 8,10 Dielectric charging of the intermetal dielectric of capacitive switches is most commonly studied; however, charging of the substrate layers in ohmic 12 and dielectricless capacitive 9 switches has also been reported.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…[7][8][9][10][11] It has been widely applied to different device architectures 9,11 fabricated using varied dielectrics 7,8,10 and processing conditions. 8,10 Dielectric charging of the intermetal dielectric of capacitive switches is most commonly studied; however, charging of the substrate layers in ohmic 12 and dielectricless capacitive 9 switches has also been reported. The evolution of pull-in voltage with stress time has been modeled by either exponential, 7 stretched exponential, [12][13][14] or power-law equations.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The evolution of pull-in voltage with stress time has been modeled by either exponential, 7 stretched exponential, [12][13][14] or power-law equations. 9,15 Both the pull-in and release voltages of capacitive switches can be simultaneously affected by mechanical degradation and dielectric charging. 16 Therefore, it can be very difficult to isolate both mechanisms when only changes of the CV characteristic are used to characterize device reliability.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Identification of the transient stress-induced leakage current in silicon dioxide films for use in microelectromechanical systems capacitive switches

Ryan

Olszewski

Houlihan

et al. 2015

Applied Physics Letters

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Dielectric charging at low electric fields is characterized on radio-frequency microelectromechanical systems (RF MEMS) capacitive switches. The dielectric under investigation is silicon dioxide deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The switch membrane is fabricated using a metal alloy which is shown to be mechanically robust. In the absence of mechanical degradation, these capacitive switches are appropriate test structures for the study of dielectric charging in MEMS devices. Monitoring the shift and recovery of device capacitance-voltage characteristics revealed the presence of a charging mechanism which takes place across the bottom metal-dielectric interface. Current measurements on metal-insulator-metal devices confirmed the presence of interfacial charging and discharging transient currents. The field-and temperature-dependence of these currents is the same as the well-known transient stress-induced leakage current (SILC) observed in flash memory devices. A simple model was created based on established transient SILC theory which accurately fits the measured data and reveals that charge exchange at the bottom metal-dielectric interface is responsible for charging currents and pull-in voltage changes in these MEMS devices. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC

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Charging in Dielectricless Capacitive RF-MEMS Switches

Cited by 69 publications

References 13 publications

Microwave MEMS devices designed for process robustness and operational reliability

Microwave MEMS devices designed for process robustness and operational reliability

Design and Simulation of an RF-MEMS Switch and analysis of its Electromagnetic aspect in realtion to stress

Identification of the transient stress-induced leakage current in silicon dioxide films for use in microelectromechanical systems capacitive switches

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