Development of high power RF MEMS switches

-This paper presents a study of the behaviour of electrically actuated RF-MEMS switches with ohmic contact. We will discuss about the relationship between the actuation voltage, displacement and the corresponding contact force experienced by the switch. We will demonstrate the linear behaviour of the switch when factors such as width or length of the switch arm are varied. Experimental results for DC actuation are also presented.

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“…1(a) [7]. By exploring power splitting /combining concept, an increase in rows of the switch matrix can effectively increase the power handling.…”

Section: Configurationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electromechanical modelling of high power RF-MEMS switches with ohmic contact

Tan

McErlean

Cui

et al. 2005

2005 European Microwave Conference

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Fabrication and characterization of MEMS cantilever array for switching applications

Khushalani¹,

Pande²,

Patrikar

2016

Microelectronic Engineering

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A Ruthenium-Based Multimetal-Contact RF MEMS Switch With a Corrugated Diaphragm

Miao

Oberhammer

2008

J. Microelectromech. Syst.

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This paper presents a ruthenium metal-contact RF microelectromechanical system switch based on a corrugated silicon oxide/silicon nitride diaphragm. The corrugations are designed to substantially reduce the influence of the fabricationinduced stress in the membrane, resulting in a highly insensitive design to process parameter variations. Furthermore, a novel multilayer metal-contact concept, comprising a 50-nm chromium/ 50-nm ruthenium/500-nm gold/50-nm ruthenium structure, is introduced to improve the contact reliability by having a hard-metal surface of ruthenium without substantial compromise in the contact and transmission-line resistances, which is shown by theoretical analysis of the contact physics and confirmed by measurement results. The contact resistance of the novel metallization stack is investigated for different contact pressures and is compared to pure-gold contacts. The contact reliability is investigated for different dc signal currents. At a measurement current of 1.6 mA, the Ru-Au-Ru contacts have an average lifetime of about 100 million cycles, whereas the Au-Au contacts reach 24 million cycles only. For larger signal currents, the metal contacts have proven to be more robust over the Au-Au contacts by a factor of ten. The measured pull-in voltage is reduced significantly from 61 V for flat diaphragm to 36 V for corrugated diaphragm with the introduction of corrugation. The measured RF isolation with a nominal contact separation of 5 µm is better than −30 dB up to 4 GHz and still −21 dB at 15 GHz, whereas the insertion loss of the fully packaged switch including its transmission line is about −0.7 dB up to 4 GHz and −2.8 dB at 15 GHz.[ 2007-0271]Index Terms-Contact metal, contact resistance, corrugated membrane, RF microelectromechanical system (MEMS) switch, wafer-level packaging.

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Development of high power RF MEMS switches

Cited by 4 publications

References 4 publications

Electromechanical modelling of high power RF-MEMS switches with ohmic contact

Electromechanical modelling of high power RF-MEMS switches with ohmic contact

Fabrication and characterization of MEMS cantilever array for switching applications

A Ruthenium-Based Multimetal-Contact RF MEMS Switch With a Corrugated Diaphragm

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