A Latching Capacitive RF MEMS Switch in a Thin Film Package

A latching capacitive RF MEMS switch has been successfully designed, fabricated and tested. The switch uses a long thin metal cantilever which is electrostatically held to an upper electrode at the free end and to a lower electrode at the beam root end forming an S-shaped actuator. The upper electrode sits on top of a thin dielectric shell which also serves as part of the package for the device. Slight dielectric charging holds the cantilever in either the on-state or off-state between switching pulses. In the latched states with no bias, insertion loss is 0.2 dB at 10 GHz and isolation is >20 dB in a narrow band around 10 GHz. Repeatable switching has been demonstrated for actuation voltages below 20 V. Hot-switched power handling has been tested up to 6 W at 10 GHz without failure