High-Power High-Reliability High-Q Switched RF MEMS Capacitors

Author

Grichener, Alex ; Mercier, Denis ; Rebeiz, Gabriel M.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor, MI

fYear

2006

fDate

11-16 June 2006

Firstpage

31

Lastpage

34

Abstract

This paper presents an RF MEMS switched-capacitor suitable for tunable filters and reconfigurable matching networks. The switched-capacitor results in a capacitance ratio of 1.5-2 depending on the design, and a very high-Q (> 225) at X to Ku-band frequencies. The switched-capacitor has been tested at 1 W of RF power at 8 GHz for > 11 billion cycles under hot-switched conditions and a uni-polar actuation voltage of 0-50 V, with virtually no change in the C-V curve. The measured switching and release time is 8 mus. The main reason for this reliability performance is the absence of all dielectric layers in the RF MEMS capacitor

Keywords

microswitches; microwave filters; reliability; switched capacitor filters; 0 to 50 V; 1 W; 8 GHz; 8 mus; RF MEMS capacitor; RF MEMS switched capacitor; high-Q switched capacitors; high-power high-reliability MEMS capacitors; hot-switched conditions; reconfigurable matching networks; reliability performance; tunable filters; uni-polar actuation voltage; Capacitance; Capacitance-voltage characteristics; Capacitors; Dielectric measurements; Matched filters; Radio frequency; Radiofrequency microelectromechanical systems; Testing; Time measurement; Voltage; RF MEMS; reconfigurable network; reliability; tunable capacitors; tunable filters;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest, 2006. IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

San Francisco, CA

ISSN

0149-645X

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9541-7

Electronic_ISBN

0149-645X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2006.249901

Filename

4014810