Dielectric charging and thermally activated processes in MEMS capacitive switches

The paper investigates dielectric charging effects for capacitive RF MEMS switches with SiO
2
as the dielectric material. Two different actuation schemes are implemented in order to incorporate and better understand the charging history over time. Experimental results indicate that regardless of the actuation scheme the charging is thermally in principle, and that the activation energy decreases as the voltage sweep rate increases.