Abstract
This paper presents a new type of capacitive shunt RF-MEMS switch. In the proposed design, HfO2 a high-k dielectric material has been used in place of SiO2. The switch based on HfO2 has 8 times less central overlap area, leading to the overall reduction of about 15% in the switch size as compared to the SiO2 based switch. The compactness has been achieved further through the interdigitation of signal lines with actuation electrodes. Further, a floating metal layer has been incorporated in the design to eliminate the capacitance reduction problem in the down-state due to surface roughness. The floating metal layer also makes the down-state behavior predictable in terms of resonant frequency. The switch based on HfO2 shows 52.70 dB isolation and 0.06 dB insertion loss at 9 GHz as compared to the 50.60 dB isolation, 0.25 dB insertion loss for the switch with SiO2. Pull-in voltage has been reduced around 65% at a gap of 1 µm between bridge and transmission line without much affecting the RF performance due to the reduced overlap area. In addition, improvement of around 2 times in the bandwidth has also been achieved. The designed switch can be used at device and sub-system level in the future telecommunication applications.
Published Version
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