A novel electrothermally actuated RF MEMS switch for wireless applications

Author

Pal, Jayanta ; Yong Zhu ; Junwei Lu ; Dzung Viet Dao

Author_Institution

Queensland Micro & Nanotechnol., Griffith Univ., Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

fYear

2013

fDate

19-21 June 2013

Firstpage

1594

Lastpage

1598

Abstract

This paper presents a new type of thermally actuated switch for wireless communication system operated at low gigahertz frequencies. The switch is driven by a metal electrothermal actuator, which can generate large displacement and high contact force at lower temperatures. The MEMS switch utilizing the parallel four-beam actuator requires driving voltage of 0.07 V for an 8 μm displacement. RF performances are improved by suspending the structure 25 μm from the substrate using MetalMumps process. An ON state insertion loss of -0.27 dB at 10 GHz and an OFF state isolation of -40 dB at 10 GHz are achieved on low resistivity silicon substrate.

Keywords

electromechanical actuators; microswitches; radiocommunication; MetalMumps process; OFF state isolation; ON state insertion loss; RF MEMS switch; contact force; frequency 10 GHz; loss -0.27 dB; low resistivity silicon substrate; metal electrothermal actuator; parallel four-beam actuator; thermally actuated switch; voltage 0.07 V; wireless communication system; Actuators; Contacts; Force; Microswitches; Radio frequency; Substrates; Electrothermal actuator; MetalMumps; RF MEMS switch; low driving voltage; low resistivity substrate;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA), 2013 8th IEEE Conference on

Conference_Location

Melbourne, VIC

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-6320-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICIEA.2013.6566623

Filename

6566623