Thermally Stable Nonuniform Microcorrugated Capacitive MEMS Tuner

Abstract

This letter reports for the first time a thermally stable capacitive microelectromechanical systems tuner based on a circular nonuniform microcorrugated diaphragm (NMCD) suitable for resonators/filters, which require a large tuning displacement (>10 μm). The temperature-induced center offset of the NMCD is reduced by 13.5× with a temperature variation of ΔT = 100 °C compared with the case of uniform microcorrugated diaphragms, which allow the NMCD to be continuously tunable in the full desired range. Moreover, the change of the actuation voltage required for a 10-μm diaphragm deflection is reduced from 51.5% to 10.4% with ΔT = 45 °C.