A high performance tunable RF MEMS switch using barium strontium titanate (BST) dielectrics for reconfigurable antennas and phased arrays

Author

Wang, Guoan ; Polley, Todd ; Hunt, Andrew ; Papapolymerou, John

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA

Volume

4

fYear

2005

fDate

6/27/1905 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

217

Lastpage

220

Abstract

In this letter, a tunable RF micro electronic mechanical systems (MEMS) switch used for the development of reconfigurable antennas that is fabricated on sapphire substrate with a barium strontium titanate (BST) dielectric is presented. BST dielectric is deposited by a combustion chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) technology. BST has a very high dielectric constant (>300) making it very appealing for high performance RF MEMS capacitive switches. The tunable dielectric constant of BST provides a possibility of making linearly tunable MEMS capacitor switches. Here for the first time a capacitive tunable RF MEMS switch with a BST dielectric and its characterization and properties up to 40 GHz are presented.

Keywords

antenna phased arrays; barium compounds; capacitor switching; chemical vapour deposition; microswitches; permittivity; BST; CCVD technology; MEMS capacitor switch; barium strontium titanate dielectric; combustion chemical vapor deposition; phased array; reconfigurable antenna; sapphire substrate; tunable RF micro electronic mechanical system; Antenna arrays; Barium; Binary search trees; Dielectric substrates; Micromechanical devices; Phased arrays; Radiofrequency microelectromechanical systems; Strontium; Switches; Titanium compounds; BST; RF MEMS; reconfigurable system; tunable;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1536-1225

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LAWP.2005.851065

Filename

1490544