A CMOS-MEMS CC-beam metal resoswitch for zero quiescent power receiver applications

A micromechanical CC-beam resonant switch, a.k.a. resoswitch, based on a 0.35-μm 2-poly-4-metal (2P4M) CMOS-MEMS process platform has been demonstrated. In particular, a 2.1-MHz resoswitch that employs (a) the mode-shape derived displacement difference along its CC-beam structure and (b) generic VIA layers available in the CMOS process to achieve displacement gain and metal tungsten-to-tungsten contact yields an average power gain of 23.46 dB when embedded in a simple switched-mode amplifier. Differing from previously reported resoswitches ([1]-[4]), this work demonstrates for the first time resoswitches developed on a standard CMOS process followed by a maskless release step identical to that in [5]. The widely available, low-cost CMOS processes would help expedite the development of resoswitches, which present as enabling components towards zero quiescent power mechanical receivers [2] [3].