High aspect ratio MEMS capacitor for high frequency impedance matching applications

Author

Yalcinkaya, Arda D. ; Jensen, Soren ; Hansen, Ole

Author_Institution

Mikroelektron. Centret, Tech. Univ. Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

Volume

2

fYear

2003

fDate

14-17 Dec. 2003

Firstpage

918

Abstract

We present a microelectromechanical tunable capacitor with a low control voltage, a wide tuning range and adequate electrical quality factor. The device is fabricated in a single-crystalline silicon layer using deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) for obtaining high-aspect ratio (> 20) parallel comb-drive structures with vertical sidewalls. The process sequence for fabrication of the devices uses only one lithographic masking step and can be completed in a short time. The fabricated device was characterized with respect to electrical quality factor, tuning range, self-resonance frequency and transient response and it was found that the device is a suitable passive component to be used in impedance matching applications, band-pass filtering or voltage controlled oscillators in the Very High Frequency (VHF) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF) bands.

Keywords

Q-factor; electrostatic actuators; impedance matching; micromachining; silicon-on-insulator; sputter etching; transient response; varactors; Si; comb-drive varactors; deep reactive ion etching; high aspect ratio MEMS capacitor; high frequency impedance matching; high-aspect ratio; lithographic masking; low actuation voltages; low control voltage; parallel comb-drive structures; transient response; tunable capacitor; vertical sidewalls; wide tuning range; Capacitors; Etching; Frequency; Impedance matching; Low voltage; Micromechanical devices; Q factor; Silicon; Tuning; Voltage control;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 2003. ICECS 2003. Proceedings of the 2003 10th IEEE International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8163-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICECS.2003.1301937

Filename

1301937