An improved design of MEMS switch for radio frequency applications

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Sharma, Ashish Kumar^{a; *} | Gupta, Navneet^a

Affiliations: [a] Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Rajasthan, India

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Ashish Kumar Sharma, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Rajasthan 333 031, India. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: An improved design of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) switch for radio frequency (RF) applications has been proposed using non-uniform serpentine flexure structure. An analytical modeling of non-uniform serpentine flexure is obtained using small displacement theory and is compared with finite element method (FEM). It is observed that in comparison to the uniform serpentine flexure reported so far, the proposed design shows a considerable reduced spring constant of 0.65 to 0.04 N/m and pull-in voltage of 15 to 3 V with better RF power handling capabilities of 4.29 to 0.2 W for span beam length varying from 100 to 280 μm. The proposed switch design shows with better RF response in terms of return loss of −20 dB and isolation of −40 dB at 26 GHz.

Keywords: MEMS switch, FEM, radio frequency, spring constant

DOI: 10.3233/JAE-130085

Journal: International Journal of Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 11-19, 2015