MEMS 30µm-thick W-band waveguide switch

This paper presents for the first time a novel concept of a MEMS waveguide switch based on a reconfigurable surface, whose working principle is to short-circuit or to allow for free propagation of the electrical field lines of the TE10 mode of a WR-12 rectangular waveguide. This transmissive surface is only 30 μm thick and consists of up to 1260 reconfiguring cantilevers in the waveguide cross-section, which are moved simultaneously by integrated MEMS comb-drive actuators. For the first fabrication run, the yield of these reconfigurable elements on the chips was 80-86%, which still was good enough for resulting in a measured insertion loss in the open state of better than 1dB and an isolation of better than 20 dB for the best designs, very wideband from 62 to 75 GHz. For 100% fabrication yield, HFSS simulations predict that an insertion loss in the open state of better than 0.1 dB and an isolation of better than 30 dB in the closed state are possible for designs with 800 and more contact points for this novel waveguide switch concept.