Dielectric charging in MEMS switches after ion-gun irradiation

In this paper we introduce a novel method to characterize dielectric charging phenomena based on the discharge current measurement. The dielectric is charged using an ion gun radiation. It is shown that both the charge sign and amount can be independently measured and that the results can be related to the pull-in shift as measured from C-V characteristics. Analysis of several time constants extracted from discharge current measurement provides further insight on the charge dynamics, governed by the dielectric parameters.