High-Power High-Reliability High-Q Switched RF MEMS Capacitors

This paper presents an RF MEMS switched-capacitor suitable for tunable filters and reconfigurable matching networks. The switched-capacitor results in a capacitance ratio of 1.5-2 depending on the design, and a very high-Q (> 225) at X to Ku-band frequencies. The switched-capacitor has been tested at 1 W of RF power at 8 GHz for > 11 billion cycles under hot-switched conditions and a uni-polar actuation voltage of 0-50 V, with virtually no change in the C-V curve. The measured switching and release time is 8 mus. The main reason for this reliability performance is the absence of all dielectric layers in the RF MEMS capacitor