RF MEMS miniature-switched capacitors with pull-down and pull-up electrodes for high power applications

Author

Sedaghat-Pisheh, Hojr ; Mahameed, Rashed ; Rebeiz, Gabriel M.

Author_Institution

Electr. & Comput. Eng. Dept., Univ. of California San Diego (UCSD), San Diego, CA, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

5-10 June 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

This paper presents miniature RF MEMS switched capacitors with pull-down and pull-up electrodes for increased capacitance ratio and power handling. A 2×2 switch array has three operation states: up-state, down-state and up-up state (switch attached to the pull-up electrode), with capacitances of 115 fF, 370 fF and 64 fF, respectively. The pull-up electrode increases the capacitance ratio from 3.2 (standard operation with no pull-up electrode) to 5.8. The pull-up electrode also solves the problem of RF self actuation and the 2×2 switch was tested up to 4 W at 5 GHz (pull-up electrode engaged) with no change in the measured S-parameters.

Keywords

capacitors; electrodes; microswitches; microwave switches; RF MEMS miniature-switched capacitors; S-parameters; capacitance 115 fF; capacitance 370 fF; capacitance 64 fF; frequency 5 GHz; high power application; power handling; pull-down electrodes; pull-up electrodes; Area measurement; Coplanar waveguides; Micromechanical devices; Radio frequency; Switches; Thickness measurement; Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices; RF MEMS; microwave switches; switches;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest (MTT), 2011 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Baltimore, MD

ISSN

0149-645X

Print_ISBN

978-1-61284-754-2

Electronic_ISBN

0149-645X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2011.5972915

Filename

5972915