An active heat-based restoring mechanism for improving the reliability of RF-MEMS switches

Modeling and simulation of an active restoring mechanism for high reliability switches in RF-MEMS technology

“…Since the micro-forces predicted by the simulations are not accessible by measurements, their exact values have to be handled with care. Investigations reported for another switch design in [17], however, indicate strengths of welded gold to gold contacts lying between 100 and 400 lN, which is exactly the order of magnitude predicted by our simulation model. This proves the basic functionality of the recovery capability for the investigated switch design as well as an (at least) adequate predictive power of our simulation, despite the latter is not yet calibrated to its full extent.…”

“…To this purpose, the authors introduced in [17] the concept of an RF-MEMS switch equipped with an active recovery mechanism, to be powered in case of device failure, which will be investigated in detail -theoretically and experimentally -in this work. …”

Integrated Magnetic MEMS Relays: Status of the Technology

“…As for ohmic switches, a number of studies aim at minimizing the risk of failure at the metal contact, with reported efforts in material characterization, modeling, selection and engineering for metal contacts [54][55][56][57]63] and even attempts to repair damages by applying sufficient voltage [58] or heat [64]. A second important failure mechanism is stiction at the electrostatic pull-down electrodes and contact surfaces, due to microwelding and material transfer [65][66][67].…”

RF-MEMS: A development flow driving innovative device concepts to high performance components and networks for wireless applications

“…Concerning modeling, the most diffused approaches are basically two, them being based on commercial FEM (Finite Element Method) tools and on compact modeling. The first solution enables coupling of multiple physical domains and resolution of complex problems typically linked to MEMS devices, as reported in [12,13], despite at the expense of significant computational loads and simulation time. On the other hand, compact modeling of MEMS problems enables fast behavioral analysis of coupled electromechanical problems, as discussed in [14,15], leading to rather accurate description of Microsystem based complex networks [16,17].…”