Electrothermally actuated RF MEMS capacitive switch with atomic layer deposited (ALD) dielectrics

Author

He, X.J. ; Lv, Z.Q. ; Liu, B. ; Li, Z.H.

Author_Institution

Nat. Key Lab. of Sci. & Technol. on Micro/Nano Fabrication, Peking Univ., Beijing, China

fYear

2011

fDate

5-9 June 2011

Firstpage

2470

Lastpage

2473

Abstract

In this paper, we developed an electrothermally driven RF MEMS capacitive switch, where the HfO₂ film, deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) process, was used as insulation dielectric of the capacitor formed by the signal line and switching plate. Thanks high permittivity and excellent electrical and thermal isolation properties of the HfO₂ film, as well as high driving force of the electrothermal actuator, the single side isolation of the proposed switch with HfO₂ film was up to 17dB at 20GHz. The results demonstrate that the HfO₂ film is a good candidate material acting as sidewall dielectric to realize the lateral capacitive switch.

Keywords

atomic layer deposition; capacitor switching; dielectric materials; hafnium compounds; microactuators; microswitches; HfO₂; atomic layer deposited dielectrics; electrothermal actuator; electrothermally actuated RF MEMS capacitive switch; electrothermally driven RF MEMS capacitive switch; frequency 20 GHz; insulation dielectric; lateral capacitive switch; sidewall dielectric; Actuators; Films; Micromechanical devices; Microswitches; Radio frequency; Atomic layer deposition (ALD); Electrothermally actuation; MEMS capacitive switch;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference (TRANSDUCERS), 2011 16th International

Conference_Location

Beijing

ISSN

Pending

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0157-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/TRANSDUCERS.2011.5969695

Filename

5969695