V-shaped micromechanical tunable capacitors for RF applications

Abstract

A new MEM varactor design is presented. It relies on the displacement of an isolated conductor in the air gap of a V-shaped capacitor. To estimate capacitance and tuning ratio of this structure the distributed point source method (DPSM) has been used for electrostatic simulations. The realisation and characterisation of glass motionless prototypes show the feasibility and the interest of this new concept for RF applications. To obtain actuated mobile devices, a novel silicon process has also been developed.