MEMS tunable capacitor with wide tuning range using multiple voltage sources

Author

Lavy, Omer ; Gal, Lior ; Weicherman, Danny ; Stolyarova, Sara ; David, Eyal ; Saad, Avraam ; Nemirovsky, Yael

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Technion - Israel Inst. of Technol., Haifa, Israel

fYear

2009

fDate

9-11 Nov. 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

5

Abstract

This paper presents a MEMS surface micro-machined varactor. The dynamic range of this class of varactors is governed by pull-in instability which is ideally one-third of the initial gap between the two electrodes. This paper presents a simple T varactor, whose pull-in stability and hence its dynamic range are increased by applying two independent voltage sources. We introduce an electromechanical model for the proposed structure, and a full analytic solution to the attached pull in problem. Our varactor has capacitance ratio of 2.43:1.

Keywords

micromachining; micromechanical devices; varactors; MEMS surface micromachined varactor; MEMS tunable capacitor; capacitance ratio; electrodes; electromechanical model; multiple voltage sources; pull-in instability; tuning; Capacitors; Dynamic range; Electrodes; Micromachining; Micromechanical devices; Radio frequency; Structural beams; Tunable circuits and devices; Varactors; Voltage; MEMS; pull in; varactor;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwaves, Communications, Antennas and Electronics Systems, 2009. COMCAS 2009. IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Tel Aviv

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-3985-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/COMCAS.2009.5386045

Filename

5386045