DocumentCode
1880070
Title
Effect of Gas Pressure on the Lifetime of Capacitive RF MEMS Switches
Author
Czarnecki, P. ; Rottenberg, X. ; Puers, R. ; de Wolf, I.
Author_Institution
IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, B-3001, Leuven, Belgium; E.E. Dept. of KULeuven, Belgium
fYear
2006
fDate
2006
Firstpage
890
Lastpage
893
Abstract
For the first time it is shown that the lifetime of capacitive RF MEMS switches depends on the ambient gas pressure. A change of the pressure causes a change of the electric strength of the gas and as a result electric discharging during the operation can occur. This indicates that insulator charging, the main failure mode in these switches, probably not only occurs upon contact between the top electrode and the insulator, but also without contact, due to electron emission or electrode-gap breakdown.
Keywords
Dielectrics; Electric breakdown; Electrodes; Electron emission; Life testing; Lifetime estimation; Radiofrequency microelectromechanical systems; Switches; Telecommunication switching; Voltage;
fLanguage
English
Publisher
ieee
Conference_Titel
Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, 2006. MEMS 2006 Istanbul. 19th IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location
Istanbul, Turkey
ISSN
1084-6999
Print_ISBN
0-7803-9475-5
Type
conf
DOI
10.1109/MEMSYS.2006.1627943
Filename
1627943
Link To Document