RF-MEMS technology platform for agile mobile and satellite communications

In the past years, the RF-MEMS activities have focused on the development of generic technology platforms integrating switches as well as tunable and fixed passives components. This is in strict opposition to a former device-centered development of the RF-MEMS technologies. Fruitful efforts were put at IMEC in the reliability analysis and modeling of the devices, the exploration of various packaging scenario and finally the process optimization to allow the handling of the devices throughout the full packaging chain. In this paper, we present several results of these developments. Various architectures of functional narrowband and wideband RF-MEMS capacitive switches are demonstrated, all processed on a single wafer, in the same process flow. The demonstrated working frequencies are 40GHz, 35GHz, 18GHz and 6GHz with measured lifetimes in excess of 10⁷ cycles at 100Hz switching frequency in N₂ atmosphere. Representative insertion loss and isolation are respectively better than 0.4dB and 20dB. Finally, we report the realization of a hybrid MEMS/MCM-D filter for GPS-GALILEO band-switching