Impact of carbon material on RF MEMS switch

Abstract

Carbon materials such as Graphene and carbon nano tube promise a new generation of RF NEMS devices that bring many advantages due to their very high performances such as low mass, high Young's modulus and electrical conductivity. In this paper, the properties of Graphene for RF M/NEMS applications are briefly described. We compare the mechanical behaviour of Graphene switches with metallic RF MEMS switches such as Aluminium and Gold. The analytical study and simulation results show that the actuation voltage of Al and Au switches is high (35 V) whereas the actuation voltage for the Graphene switch is low (7.7 V). Also, the switching time of Graphene switch is 3.5 ns while the switching time for metallic switches is approximately 17µs.

Design and simulation of a high isolation RF MEMS shunt capacitive switch for C-K band

“…In our published comprehensive literature review paper we mentioned that there are two major drawbacks with capacitive RF MEMS switches [3]. The first major problem is the dielectric charging which we addressed this problem and proposed a novel ramp dual pulse (RDP) to reduce the actuation voltage shift and charging effect on the dielectric in our previous paper [4].…”