Low voltage actuated RF micromechanical switches fabricated using CMOS-MEMS technique

Abstract

This study investigates the fabrication of radio frequency (RF) micromechanical switches with low actuation voltage using the commercial 0.35 mu m double polysilicon four metal (DPFM) complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process and the post-process. The advantages of RF micromechanical switches include low pull-down voltage and ease of post-processing. Three types of RF micromechanical switches are designed and manufactured. The RF switches are capacitive type, and the structures of the switches comprise coplanar waveguide (CPW) transmission lines, supported springs and a suspended membrane. The post-process requires only a wet etching silicon dioxide layer. Experimental results show that type-c switch needs only a pull-down voltage of 7 V

Manufacture of Radio Frequency Micromachined Switches with Annealing

“…To obtain excellent membrane flatness, this study adopts an annealing process to improve the residual stress of the membrane. The insertion loss and isolation of this work exceed that of the previous works [10,21]. In addition, the membrane has many etching holes as shown in Figure 2a, in order to reduce the etching time during the post-process.…”

Material Selection of Rf-Mems Switch Used for Reconfigurable Antenna Using Ashby's Methodology

“…Gold also shows the desired property but is a very expensive material. In order to validate the outcome of this paper, the results were compared with experimental results of various researchers [18][19][20] and found confirmation for this study.…”

Design, optimization and simulation of a low-voltage shunt capacitive RF-MEMS switch

“…In this design, the initial gap is determined by the CMOS process (g 0 = g air + t d ); the membrane area is generally decided by the coupling capacitance which is in pF range and does not have much space and flexibility to be modified here. Therefore, the main parameter that can be designed and controlled by the researchers is the spring constant (Dai and Chen 2006;Peroulis et al 2003;Balaraman et al 2002;Kuwabara et al 2006;Jaafar et al 2009). The relationship of V p and k can be observed in Fig.…”

“…Diverse RF-MEMS switch designs have been proposed by various researchers to reduce the actuation voltages. A dedicated RF-MEMS switch fabricated in 0.35 µm CMOS process has been reported to require a pull-in voltage of 7 V (Dai and Chen 2006). A bi-stable RF-MEMS switch was designed with a low actuation voltage of 5 V, but was not compatible with CMOS process (Lakamraju and Phillips 2005).…”