Thin film wafer level encapsulated RF-MEMS switch for D-Band applications

This paper presents a wafer level packaged (WLP) RF-MEMS switch fabricated in a 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS process technology for D-Band (110–170 GHz) applications. For the wafer level packaging, thin film encapsulation approach is developed and used during the Back-End-of-Line (BEOL) fabrication process. The fabricated wafer level encapsulated (WLE) RF-MEMS switch provides a high capacitance Con/Coff ratio of 11.1. The fabricated WLE RF-MEMS switch shows beyond state of the art RF performances of better than 0.67 dB insertion loss and more than 16 dB isolation in all D-band. The measured maximum isolation of the WLE switch is 51.6 dB at 142.8 GHz with an insertion loss of 0.65 dB.