Design and Analysis of the Capacitive RF MEMS Switches with Support Pillars

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 22; no. 22; p. 8864
• Main Authors: Feng, Hongbo, Zhao, Jiabin, Zhou, Chengsi, Song, Mingxin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 16.11.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Circuit design; Design and construction; Electric potential; Electrodes; Failure; Impact loads; Impact velocity; Insertion loss; Membranes; Methods; Microelectromechanical systems; pull-in time; reliability; RF MEMS; Silicon nitride; Suction; Switches; Velocity; Voltage; China; switches; pull-in time; RF MEMS; impact velocity; reliability
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s22228864

Conventional parallel capacitive RF MEMS switches have a large impact during the suction phase. In general, RF MEMS switches have to be switched on and off in a considerably fast manner. Increasing the driving voltage enables fast switching but also increases the impact force, which causes the beam membrane to be prone to failure. In the present study, the addition of two support pillars was proposed for slowing down the fall of the beam membrane based on the conventional RF MEMS parallel switch, so as to reduce the impact velocity. As such, a novel RF MEMS switch was designed. Further, simulation software was used to scan and analyze the positioning and height of the support pillars with respect to electromechanical and electromagnetic performance. The simulation results show that the optimal balance of impact velocity and pull-in time was achieved at a height of 0.8 um, a distance of 10 um from the signal line, and an applied voltage of 50 V. The impact velocity was reduced from 1.8 m/s to 1.1 m/s, decreasing by nearly 40%. The turn off time increased from 3.9 us to 4.2 us, representing an increase of only 0.05%. The insertion loss was less than 0.5 dB at 32 GHz, and the isolation was greater than 50 dB at 40 GHz.