Acceleration of Microwelding on Ohmic RF-MEMS Switches

Author

Tazzoli, Augusto ; Meneghesso, Gaudenzio

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. Eng., Univ. of Padova, Padova, Italy

Volume

20

Issue

3

fYear

2011

fDate

6/1/2011 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

552

Lastpage

554

Abstract

This letter aims to propose a new setup for systematically inducing microwelding formation on ohmic RF microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) switches using electrostatic discharge events in a controllable manner. The established procedure was verified with success on different typologies of clamped-free and clamped-clamped electrostatically actuated switches, but it can be easily extended to other families of MEMS devices. This setup makes possible the evaluation of the intrinsic robustness of different designs to the stiction caused by microwelding events, and it can be adopted to evaluate the efficiency of an active restoring mechanism implemented within the RF-MEMS switch.

Keywords

electrostatic discharge; microswitches; welding; MEMS devices; electrostatic discharge; electrostatically actuated switches; microwelding acceleration; microwelding events; microwelding formation; ohmic RF microelectromechanical systems switches; ohmic RF-MEMS switches; Contacts; Current measurement; Electrostatic discharge; Micromechanical devices; Optical switches; Radio frequency; Reliability; Electrostatic discharge (ESD); RF-MEMS; microwelding; reliability;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microelectromechanical Systems, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1057-7157

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JMEMS.2011.2140360

Filename

5755127