Surface and bulk micromachined RF MEMS capacitive series switch for watt-range hot switching operation

This paper presents a novel RF MEMS capacitive series switch fabricated on a high-resistivity Si substrate using bulk and surface micromachining techniques. The structure is optimized for achieving watt-range power handling capabilities in hot switching operation by avoiding the appearance of RF latching phenomena. It can be designed for working at S and C- band. Thus, the switch has been fabricated and tested showing a good RF performance in the chosen frequency band. Pull-in and hold-down voltages have been measured for RF input powers ranging from 0.1 - 5 W at 10 GHz showing the significant shift on the maximum RF power without stiction achieved by our structure. Finally, switch reliability has been tested over 10.5 million cycles at 5 W without noticeable degradation.