A lateral, self-cleaning, direct contact MEMS switch

Author

Shi, Yong ; Kim, Sang-Gouk

Author_Institution

Stevens Inst. of Technol., Hoboken, NJ, USA

fYear

2005

fDate

30 Jan.-3 Feb. 2005

Firstpage

195

Lastpage

198

Abstract

A direct contact MEMS switch has been developed with compliant lateral metal contacts to address the needs of low contact resistance and long life cycles. The device is unique in self-alignment of the contact surfaces, self-cleaning of particles generated during operations and mechanical anchoring method of the contact metal in the Su-8 switch structures. It has been demonstrated experimentally that a low contact resistance of about 0.1 Ω is maintained for up to 10 billions of cycles of operation. The switch design is compatible with our thin film PZT actuating technology and can be readily integrated into a fully functional MEMS switch.

Keywords

contact resistance; microswitches; piezoelectric actuators; Su-8 switch; compliant lateral metal contacts; contact resistance; contact surfaces; direct contact MEMS switch; lateral MEMS switch; life cycles; mechanical anchoring; self-cleaning MEMS switch; thin film PZT actuating technology; Cleaning; Contact resistance; Distributed parameter circuits; Micromechanical devices; Microswitches; Power system reliability; Radio frequency; Radiofrequency microelectromechanical systems; Surface resistance; Switches;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, 2005. MEMS 2005. 18th IEEE International Conference on

ISSN

1084-6999

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8732-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MEMSYS.2005.1453900

Filename

1453900