Monolithic GaAs PHEMT MMICs integrated with high performance MEMS microrelays

We report the successful integration of MEMS microrelays with PHEMT MMIC in a single monolithic structure. The process we describe here allows us to build MEMS microrelays along GaAs PHEMT devices without any sacrifice in performance or yield to either device. The test structure used the switches to activate one of two X-band LNAs. The switches have an insertion loss of less than 0.3 dB up to 50 GHz while the LNAs have a gain of 20 dB and 1.1 dB NF at 9 GHz.