RF MEMS capacitive shunt switch for low loss applications

Abstract

Radio frequency (RF) microelectromechanical system capacitive shunt switch with metal-to-metal contact is designed, fabricated and tested with the aim of having very low insertion loss (<0.2 dB) for high frequencies. The switch is designed with two identical parallel side beams with no overlapping with the signal line. This design has an added advantage of removing the self-actuation issues at high RF power. The measured isolation offered by the switch is greater than 40 dB at the resonant frequency, and the resonant frequency can be easily tuned by changing the length of a thin floating metal layer beneath the signal line.