Nanocrystalline diamond RF MEMS capacitive switch

Author

Balachandran, S. ; Hoff, D.M. ; Kumar, A. ; Weller, T.M.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Univ. of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

fYear

2009

fDate

7-12 June 2009

Firstpage

1657

Lastpage

1660

Abstract

This paper presents an RF MEMS capacitive switch using nanocrystalline diamond as the dielectric. The switch is electro-statically actuated and small signal measurements are presented in the frequency range of 1-65 GHz. The measured insertion loss in the up-state is ~ 1.1 dB at ~50 GHz with 30 dB isolation in the off-state. Dielectric characterization was performed using the Corona-Kelvin technique and standard I-V testing on comparison nitride and diamond test fixtures. The leaky nature of the diamond films provides a potential solution to reliability issues related to dielectric charging.

Keywords

diamond; dielectric materials; microswitches; nanoelectronics; Corona-Kelvin technique; I-V testing; diamond films; dielectric characterization; dielectric charging; insertion loss; nanocrystalline diamond RF MEMS capacitive switch; Dielectric loss measurement; Dielectric measurements; Fixtures; Frequency measurement; Insertion loss; Loss measurement; Performance evaluation; Radiofrequency microelectromechanical systems; Switches; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest, 2009. MTT '09. IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Boston, MA

ISSN

0149-645X

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2803-8

Electronic_ISBN

0149-645X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2009.5166032

Filename

5166032