Characterization of dielectric charging in RF MEMS capacitive switches

Dielectric Charge Control in Electrostatic MEMS Positioners/Varactors

“…For example, in [32] the voltage drift as a function of time does not saturate. In addition, Herfst et al [24], [33], while applying the exponential, stretch exponential and square root models to fit experimental data, note that √ t accurately describes the voltage shift versus time. The square root itself is a non-saturation function, however, these works note that it might appear as a Taylor expansion of the stretched exponential with β ≈ 0.5.…”

Charge induced by ionizing radiation understood as a disturbance in a sliding mode control of dielectric charge

“…This kind of measurement is insensitive to vertical shifts of the C-V that can be caused by charge inhomogeneity [18] or by changes in environmental factors such as temperature or humidity [19], [20]. Note that charge sensing is built-in with device actuation, so it is less invasive than other common methods used to detect the total charge, such as measuring V sh as the displacement of the pull-in voltage (which involves applying voltage stress to close the device and thus takes time and dramatically alters the charge status) or performing shortrange C-V measurements to detect the displacement of the minimum of the curve [21].…”

Characterization and reliability studies towards piezoelectrically actuated RF-MEMS switches

“…So the low-field C-V curve can be approximated by a parabola shape: C = aV 2 DC + b as is experimentally observed earlier [82]. The minimum capacitance equals b.…”

“…Melle et al also observe the same phenomenon and propose the lifetime can be extrapolated from the rate of shift of capacitance-voltage curve measured for a short time [89,90]. Herfst et al improve the method to measure the shift: the shift can be mea-sured without fully actuating the RF-MEMS switch, but using an accurate capacitance measurement and a parabola fitting of the measured low-field capacitance-voltage curve [82,91].…”

“…Charging can be detected by capacitancevoltage measurements [81,82]. Kelvin probe force microscopy technique based on atomic force microscopy (AFM) with a conductive tip is able to draw a surface map of the charge [22,81].…”