• DocumentCode
    3131786
  • Title

    Experimental characterization of stiction due to charging in RF MEMS

  • Author

    Van Spengen, W. Merlijn ; Puers, Robert ; Mertens, Robert ; De Wolf, Ingrid

  • Author_Institution
    IMEC, Leuven, Belgium
  • fYear
    2002
  • fDate
    8-11 Dec. 2002
  • Firstpage
    901
  • Lastpage
    904
  • Abstract
    We show that the commonly quoted number of cycles to failure is not a good figure of merit for the reliability of RF MEMS capacitive switches suffering from charging induced stiction failures. We use data from a new tool for low-frequency RF MEMS capacitance measurements and interferometric optical inspection. The total time the device is actuated before it fails is a much better measure.
  • Keywords
    automatic optical inspection; electrostatic actuators; microswitches; microwave switches; stiction; RF MEMS; capacitive switches; charging; figure of merit; interferometric optical inspection; low-frequency capacitance measurements; stiction; total actuation time; Bridge circuits; Capacitance measurement; Frequency measurement; Optical filters; Optical interferometry; Optical receivers; Optical switches; Radio frequency; Radiofrequency microelectromechanical systems; Voltage;
  • fLanguage
    English
  • Publisher
    ieee
  • Conference_Titel
    Electron Devices Meeting, 2002. IEDM '02. International
  • Conference_Location
    San Francisco, CA, USA
  • Print_ISBN
    0-7803-7462-2
  • Type

    conf

  • DOI
    10.1109/IEDM.2002.1175982
  • Filename
    1175982