Influence of parameters of fabrication on quality and performance of Superconducting MEM switches

In earlier work a capacitively shunted superconducting MicroElectroMechanical (MEM) switch has been designed and fabricated. The switch is composed of high temperature superconducting (HTS) YBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub 7/ coplanar waveguide structure with a gold bridge membrane suspended above an area of the center conductor covered with BaTiO/sub 3/ dielectric. The switch demonstrated an insertion loss of less than 0.007 dB with 30 dB isolation at 3 GHz. These switches have been shown to be viable, however, issues of the dielectric material deposition and gold bridge release process posed limitations on the yield and switch cycling. In this work we report on the issues encountered and improvements made in the development of HTS MEMS switches for use in tunable RF devices.