DC CONTACT RF MEMS SWITCHES WITH LOW ACTUATION VOLTAGE

Fabienne Pennec (1) , Patrick Pons (1) , Anthony Coustou (2) , Pierre-François Calmon (3) , Robert Plana (1) , Frédéric Courtade (4)

1 LAAS-MINC - Équipe MIcro et Nanosystèmes pour les Communications sans fil
2 LAAS-II
3 LAAS-TEAM - Service Techniques et Équipements Appliqués à la Microélectronique
4 CNES - Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse]

Capacitive RF MEMS switches demonstrate that it is difficult to obtain a perfect capacitive contact for a low actuation voltage. Architectures of MEMS switches with resistive contact are then developed. The objective is to minimize the contact resistance to obtain the best RF performances while keeping a low actuation voltage. First set of results have shown that good RF performances, with contact resistance lower than 1.3O, can be obtained with a 30V actuation voltage and with a 6µm gap height. With cantilever height around 1.5µm it will be then possible to obtain enough contact force with 6V applied voltage.

Mots clés: DC contact MEMS switch; actuation voltage; optimization; contact force; contact resistance; CoventorWare

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Fabienne Pennec, Patrick Pons, Anthony Coustou, Pierre-François Calmon, Robert Plana, et al.. DC CONTACT RF MEMS SWITCHES WITH LOW ACTUATION VOLTAGE. 2007. ⟨hal-00180254⟩