Study of an active thermal recovery mechanism for an electrostatically actuated RF-MEMS switch

Author

Kuenzig, Thomas ; Iannacci, J. ; Schrag, G. ; Wachutka, G.

Author_Institution

Inst. for Phys. of Electrotechnol., Munich Univ. of Technol., Munich, Germany

fYear

2012

fDate

16-18 April 2012

Firstpage

42376

Lastpage

42558

Abstract

We present a comprehensive study on an electrostatically actuated RF-MEMS switch with active thermal recovery capability intended to counteract stiction. On the basis of finite element (FE) simulations a detailed model including all relevant physical effects has been developed to investigate this recovery mechanism. The resulting model enables to reproduce the whole recovery process during a failure situation of the switch, proving its functionality and, thus, identifying and elaborating possible design improvements. The simulated results are confirmed by experimental data obtained from white-light interferometry (VEECO) and laser-Doppler vibrometry (Polytec).

Keywords

finite element analysis; microswitches; stiction; active thermal recovery; electrostatically actuated RF-MEMS switch; finite element simulation; laser-Doppler vibrometry; stiction; white-light interferometry; Heating; Lead; Molecular beam epitaxial growth; Switches; Transient analysis; Welding;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Thermal, Mechanical and Multi-Physics Simulation and Experiments in Microelectronics and Microsystems (EuroSimE), 2012 13th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Cascais

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-1512-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ESimE.2012.6191766

Filename

6191766