RF MEMS SWITCH FOR HIGH FREQUENCY APPLICATION

We have designed, fabricated and characterized RF MEMS shunt switch with low pull-in voltage for improved RF performance. The electromechanical and electromagnetic analysis of 3D structure have been performed using Finite Element Method (FEM) & Method of Moments (MoM) based full wave simulators.

The Radio Frequency Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (RF-MEMS) capacitive shunt switch based on different configurations of beams including a fixed-fixed beam configuration have been demonstrated for X (8–12 GHz), Ku (12–18 GHz), K (18–26 GHz) and Ka (26–40 GHz) band applications. The design parameters for RF switch have been taken into consideration based on in-house standard 6” CMOS foundry. Silicon substrate with high resistivity (ρ > 8kΩ-cm, εr = 11.8, and tanδ = 0.01) has been utilized for the realization of MEMS switch. The device demonstrates the pull in voltage of 22.78 V. The measured return loss, insertion loss and isolation are better than 20 dB, 0.5 dB and 25 dB respectively, over the entire frequency band (0–40 GHz).