Reliability of Dielectric Less Electrostatic Actuators in RF-MEMS Ohmic Switches

This paper presents the effects of residual charging in dielectric less actuators of RF-MEMS ohmic switches. Indeed, in order to strongly reduce component sensitivity to charging, a dielectric less electrostatic actuator has been introduced in a conventional DC contact series MEMS relay design, resulting both in strong improvement in reliability and preservation of its intrinsic RF performance. Under various stress applied, the pullin and pull-out voltages drift over time of these components have been observed and analyzed. Hence, based on component pull-in and pull-out voltage measurements during only few minutes of a given stress, an efficient model able to accurately predict the actuator reliability up to 60 days with good agreement will be presented.