Modeling of Bending Characteristics on Micromachined RF MEMS Switch Based on LCP Substrate

Abstract

This paper studies on the RF MEMS switch based on flexible liquid crystal polymer (LCP) substrate and the influence of the LCP substrate bending characteristics on mechanical properties of the switch. Due to the excellent properties of flexible LCP materials, RF MEMS devices based on LCP substrates will be very suitable for microwave systems with high space requirements and wearable devices. Obviously, the deformation of flexible substrate will affect the performance of RF MEMS switch. Therefore, this paper proposes a modeling of the substrate bending to analyze it. The experimental results of the fabricated switches show that the pull-in voltage of the switch is $\sim 22$ V, the insertion loss is better than −0.6 dB, the isolation is better than −15 dB, and the return loss is better than −18 dB up to 20 GHz. According to the experiments, we can find that when the curvature of the substrate is increased from zero to 22.2 (1/m), then the measured pull-in voltage is increased from 22.1 to 23.9 V and when the curvature of the substrate is increased from 22.2 to 44.2 (1/m), then the measured pull-in voltage is decreased from 23.9 to 18.9 V. In conclusion, with the increase of substrate curvature, the switch pull-in voltage will increase at first and then decrease. The experimental results are in good agreement with the modeling.