A Latching Capacitive RF MEMS Switch in a Thin Film Package (Preprint)

Abstract

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- 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.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA446248

Entities

People

  • John L. Ebel
  • Kevin D. Leedy
  • Rebecca Cortez
  • Richard E. Strawser

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Actuators
  • Air Force
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Electrodes
  • Films
  • Government Procurement
  • Governments
  • Insertion Loss
  • Losses
  • Measurement
  • Microelectromechanical Systems
  • Military Research
  • Radio Frequency Devices
  • Radio Frequency Power
  • Switches
  • Switching
  • Thin Films

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Microwave Engineering.
  • Structural Dynamics.