Surface micromachined GHz tunable capacitor with 14:1 continuous tuning range

Author

Lee, Chuang-Yuan ; Chen, Shih-Jui ; Chi, Derrick ; Yu, Hongyu ; Kim, Eun Sok

Author_Institution

Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles

fYear

2008

fDate

13-17 Jan. 2008

Firstpage

1008

Lastpage

1011

Abstract

This paper reports a new simply-supported bridge structure and its use for GHz tunable capacitor application. Unlike traditional MEMS bridges with fully-clamped boundary condition (B.C.) at the anchors, the new bridge structure has simply-supported B.C. Through the implementation of a simply-supported bridge driven by two 100-mum-long ZnO-actuated cantilevers, a compact surface-micromachined tunable capacitor has been fabricated on a single chip without any warping, and shown to be capable of a 1,400% continuous tuning from 0.13 pF to 1.82 pF.

Keywords

II-VI semiconductors; cantilevers; capacitors; circuit tuning; micromachining; piezoelectric actuators; zinc compounds; GHz tunable capacitor; ZnO; boundary condition; capacitance 0.13 pF to 1.82 pF; piezoelectrically-actuated cantilevers; simply-supported bridge structure; size 100 mum; surface micromachined capacitor design; Bridge circuits; Capacitance; Capacitors; Electrodes; Etching; Micromechanical devices; Silicon; Tunable circuits and devices; Voltage; Zinc oxide;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, 2008. MEMS 2008. IEEE 21st International Conference on

Conference_Location

Tucson, AZ

ISSN

1084-6999

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-1792-6

Electronic_ISBN

1084-6999

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MEMSYS.2008.4443829

Filename

4443829