Abstract
This paper presents the lifetime testing results of an electrostatically actuated microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) switch with the resistive contact and the active contact breaking mechanism. Moveable electrode of the switch is an aluminium beam with platinum contact bumps located on its bottom surface, which comes in contact with platinum thin-film electrodes. The switch operates in a cold DC mode in a standard laboratory environment. Testing is performed at three levels of the input current: 0.05, 0.5 and 5 mA. The dependence of the resistance in the “on” state on the number of actuation cycles is measured. Resistance of the “fresh” samples is in the range from 150 to 350 Ω. Instability of the resistance is observed during cycling, that is probably related to contamination of the contacts. Lifetime of the switch is limited by the sharp increase of the on-resistance up to 100 MΩ and varies from 2×103 to 5×104 cycles depending on the switch design and the input current.
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