A High-Speed Inkjet-Printed Microelectromechanical Relay With a Mechanically Enhanced Double-Clamped Channel-Beam

We report a high-speed inkjet-printed three-terminal microelectromechanical (MEM) relay with a double-clamped beam that exploits the enhanced stiffness of the double-clamped structure to improve electrical performance. To minimize mechanical delay and pull-in voltage, the contact gap between the channel-beam and drain, and the stiffness of the beam and shape of the drain was carefully designed and optimized through a 3-D finite element simulation. The double-clamped beam prevents stiction-related failure between the channel-beam and drain despite the contact gap being only 370 nm for a
$> 500~\mu \text{m}$
long beam. The resulting printed relay delivers a turn-ON delay of
$8~\mu \text{s}$
at a gate voltage of 10 V, a pull-in voltage of only 7.2 V, immeasurable off-leakage, excellent subthreshold swing, and a small hysteresis window of 2 V without any bending or collapsing of the beam. The device also shows reliable operation over
$10^{5}$
cycles while maintaining a high ON/OFF ratio of
$10^{8}$
, and extremely low ON-state resistance of 3.7
$\Omega $
. [2016-0180]