Leading and trailing edge hot switching damage in a metal contact RF MEMS switch

This paper describes the hot switching damage in a MEMS switch contact. Under hot switched conditions, material transfer leading to contact erosion causes the performance of RF MEMS switches to degrade over their lifetime. Hot switching performance of RF MEMS switches is one of the major reliability issues and is presently affecting the marketability of these devices despite their proven advantages over solid state switches which are currently used in RF systems. The phenomena leading to such damage both at the leading and trailing edge of a switching cycle are investigated in this paper.