The design, fabrication and testing of high-isolation contact MEMS switch using AlSi membrane on high-resistivity silicon substrates are described. Simulation result of the switch is analyzed and shows good performance. The measured results show that the isolation of the MEMS switch is better than -30dB at 0.05 - 5GHz. And it has not only low actuation voltage, but also the high reliability. So this contact MEMS switch can be widely used in MEMS phase shifters.
In this paper, silicon nitride film, as thick as 1.1μm, was first deposited on porous silicon by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). No crack was detected, on the contrary of the case that is deposited on a single crystalline thin film. Such layer was bonded to a glass substrate via a media of optical epoxy. And finally, separation of such layer from the original silicon substrate via splitting of porous silicon was investigated and the transmission properties before and after transfer bonding process were investigated. It is shown that such a transfer bonding process can be a good solution to the attenuation problem in silicon based RF system.
Oxidized porous silicon/porous silicon (OPS/PS) has been introduced as a low-loss substrate for an on-chip LC low-pass filter (LPF). The LPF is optimally designed with midband insertion loss (MIL) of -4.5dB and nominal cutoff frequency at 900MHz. The fabrication of the LPF based OPS/PS is in prevailing CMOS process. Experiments show that the performance of the LPF has been greatly improved with MIL of -4.54dB that meets the designed value quite well. And in comparison with MIL of LPF on SiO2/Si (8Ω cm), MIL with the proposed interlayer is lowered by 8dB, which implies that the microwave loss resulting from the substrate part can be substantially suppressed by introducing OPS/PS.
A surface MEMS miniature switch with the cantilevered arm has been made on low resistivity Si substrate. The switch was inserted into a time domain setup and their lifetimes have been characterized as a function of actuated voltage, demonstrating some relationship among lifetime and threshold voltage. The structure of MEMS RF switch is simulated by ANSYS software, doing some failure analysis and discussing difference comparing the experiment.
A cheap and simple method of depositing copper into porous silicon by cathode electroplating was described. The existence of cubic copper nano-particles (~30nm) into porous silicon matrix was verified by X-ray Diffraction and Scanning Electron Microscopy. The microcrystal size of porous silicon and strain between porous silicon and copper layer were discussed based on the Raman spectra.
Polyimide has been an important sacrificial layer material in the MEMS switch. Polyimide can be spun and photographied on silicon substrate. NaOH liquid can etch and develop polyimide. Then it needs to cure. After MEMS switch are manufactured, polyimide must be removed. The different cure temperature and time impacts the character of polyimide. The experiment result shows that it is easy to remove and can be lithographed. So it is suitable for microwave device. In this paper, refers that polyimide can be etched by NaOH, O2 and CF4.
The MEMS-type Fabry-Perot cavity is used widely in some kinds of tunable optical MEMS devices. In this paper, the index compatible problem of multi-layer optical film design of Fabry-Perot cavity in the variable optical attenuator (VOA) has been investigated, which is using the transport matrix of optical medium film theoretically. Based on our theoretical model and simulation, our design for the MEMS-type Fabry-Perot cavity has better advantage of the compatibility. At first, it can be adjusted for the different working mode. Secondly, the thickness of the multi-layer film can be restructured according the refractive index of the material available. Finally, it is a self-alignment system, which makes it quite favorable for fiber alignment and procedure of package.
This paper presents numerical analysis of pull-in voltage for contact microelectromechanical (MEMS) switch in switched-line phase shifter application. The contact MEMS switch consists of a fixed-fixed thin metal membrane called the “bridge” suspended over a broken center conductor of coplanar waveguide (CPW). The center conductor sandwiched by a pair of symmetrical off-center drive capacitors that form two electrostatic actuators. A lumped-model for two coupled parallel-plates actuators is applied to describe the electromechanical behavior and the pull-in phenomenon in the contact MEMS switch. And a static mechanical model including the residual stress effects is developed to provide the effective stiffness coefficient for the prediction of pull-in voltage in a contact MEMS switch with uniform bridge width. As a theoretical basis, lower pull-in voltage can be achieved by optimizations on structure and material of bridge.
This paper presents the design, fabrication and performance of a metal-to-metal contact shunt micro-electro-mechanical (MEMS) switch. The switch was composed of a fixed-fixed Al0.96Si0.04 alloy beam with two pull-down electrodes and a central dc-contact area. The switch was placed in an in-line configuration in a coplanar waveguide transmission line. The best RF performance shows insertion loss of less than 0.3dB and isolation of greater than 35dB for all frequencies up to 10 GHz.
We propose the use of oxidized porous silicon as a low-loss substrate for the microwave devices. The oxidization of porous silicon is expected to increase the resistivity of Si surface layer and to reduce its effective dielectric loss, which would leads to a significant reduction of the nature loss of low-resisitivity (low-R) Si substrates under the microwave operation. In the present study, a significant improved microwave performance on low-R Si substrates has been demonstrated by measuring the microwave characteristics of coplanar waveguides fabricated on the Si substrates with thick oxidized porous surface layers.
Microwave transmission lines have been designed and fabricated by the CMOS technology on Si substrates with low and high resistivities. First, We analyzed the characteristic impedance of the microwave coplanar waveguides (CPW) with a new similarity method in FEM, which is especially useful for research of the problems about the nonuniform and irregular region, such as the case of micromachined microwave coplanar waveguide. By using this method, we calculated the characteristic impedance of MEMS waveguide and analyzed the change with its different dimensions. Then the samples with characteristic impedances of 120(Omega) and 50(Omega) were fabricated through the surface micromachining and bulk micromachining. Measurements have been performed at frequencies from 1 to 40GHz. The insert loss of transmission-line showed great improvement after the structures were suspended. At 30GHz, the insert loss was about 7dB/cm, reduced by more than 10dB/cm compared with without suspended. To compare with the transmission lines on the low-resistivity silicon (low-R Si), we also fabricated the transmission lines directly on the high-resistivity Si substrate (high-R Si), the insert loss was only 1-4dB/cm at the frequencies from 1 to 40GHz.
An application of multiline method in measuring the effective dielectric constant of micromachiend microwave transmission lines is presented in this paper. This multiline method does not need a network analyzer calibration. It produces the effective dielectric constant of the structure using propagation constant measurements. For comparison, we performed measurements in micromachined microwave transmission lines both before and after they were suspended. The measurement result show that at high frequency the real part of the effective dielectric constant of the structure is about 6 before suspending and is about 1 after suspending. The imaginary part of the measured effective dielectric constant of the structure is about zero because the transmissions line is very short.
We simulate the structure of surface MEMS RF switch by suing ANSYS electrostatic and mechanical energy coupled analysis with established models. In this paper actuation voltage for different geometrical scales of suspended beam contacted switch are discussed. The dependence of actuation voltage on the Yang's module, size of cantilever and electrode area is calculated.
Micromachined microwave coplanar waveguides were fabricated in standard CMOS technology and the hybrid etch technology. The coplanar waveguides have been suspend from the silicon substrate and third insertion loss was greatly improved. When fabricating the micromachined structures on a (100) wafer, stress was relaxed because of the different thermal expansion coefficients between silicon and SiO2 dielectric. This caused this structures deformed. Among all etching pattern we had adopted, the etching orientation along the (100) line of the wafer obtained the smaller stress relaxation, but costing the longest etching time. ON the other hand, the space between the open areas for etching needs to be designed carefully to obtain the best mechanical and electrical properties.
A surface micromachined miniature switch has been made on silicon substrate using an electroplated gold micro-beam as the cantilevered arm, a chromium-to-gold electrical contact, and electrostatic actuation as the switching mechanism. The switch has an electrical isolation of -30dB in the 'off' state and an insertion loss of 4-7dB form 1 to 10 Ghz with a return loss of -15dB in the 'on' state. The high insertion loss has attributed to generation of parasitic current in low resistivity of the silicon substrate.
In this paper we demonstrated a micromechanical optical modulator fabricated by surface micromechanical techniques. This modulator is optimized for a wavelength of 1.3 micrometers and intended for a fiber-to-the-home system. The modulation voltage is between 10 - 30 V, and at this modulation voltage modulator can work stably for long time in a wide frequency range.
Using porous silicon as a sacrificial layer with a large distance from the structure to the substrate, the porous Si micromachining is a new generation surface micromachining technology. A sketch of the special self-made 3-cavity electrochemical device used for anodisation and a detailed description of the porous film formation parameters were given int his paper. Anodisation is performed with current density 40 mA/cm2 for 60 minutes. Formation parameters and amounts of several major impurities of porous-Si layer are studied. The porous-Si layer was removed in 1 percent KOH and then the flow channel with depth of 50 micrometers was formed. A 0.2 micrometers Ni-Cr thin film was deposited and patterned on the Si3N4+ poly-Si microbridge as a thermistor. The analysis model was introduced and met quite well with the experiment. The results of the fast response and low power dissipation are reported in this paper.
The present paper reports on the sheet resistance of Semi-Insulating Oxygen-Doped Polysilicon (SIPOS) using ion implantation. The type of dopant implanted, implant dose and annealing temperature are influence the sheet resistance of implanted SIPOS film. In addition, the behaviors of oxygen and hydrogen in implanted SIPOS film have been described, so that may be form the conduction model. We used three samples with different oxygen content implanted by Boron (B), Phosphorus (P) and Arsenic (As) various ions and measured the sheet resistance of those samples. As it is well known, the electrical properties and microstructures of SIPOS films are very sensitive to the oxygen content, so we measure the changes of oxygen content and hydrogen content after implantation, and then the conduction of implanted SIPOS film have been analyzed in this paper.
The process of the porous silicon layer formation and etching off is a new generation surface micromachining technology. The key problem of using porous silicon as a sacrificial layer is to do research on the selectivity of porous layer formation. In this paper, we will present the experimental results about which that the silicon is transformed to porous silicon in concentrated HF solution, including the relationship with current density J (mA/cm2), HF concentration C (wt%) and the substrate resistivity ((Omega) cm). Besides, by using implantation and epitaxial methods to change the doping level of the mask, porous silicon can be locally formed, the thickness and the undercutting may be changed by the parameters described before.
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