A low voltage actuated RF-MEMS shunt capacitive switch

Abstract

Micro electromechanical system switches (MEMS) have procured remarkable attention in recent years due to their perceptible accomplishment in RF and microwave areas. The major challenge in RF-MEMS is to minimize the actuation voltage deprived of restoring force losses. The proposed design presents the analysis of a low actuation voltage shunt capacitive RF-MEMS switch. The proposed switch comprises low actuation voltage, low insertion loss and very high isolation. A horizontal structure of bridge membrane is exhibited in this design and its vertical movement is presided by the electrostatics MEMS actuation technique, which actually provides the ON and OFF conditions of the switch. The actuation pad is fed by coplanar wave guide (CPW) transmission line. The switch performance is successfully evaluated for a large frequency range from 1 GHz to 40GHz. The actuation voltage of the proposed design has been observed to be 3.0 Volts for a vertical displacement of 1.5 μm. Moreover, the fixed-fixed flexures beam structure offers the isolation of -43 dB and insertion loss of -0.12 dB at 28 GHz.