RF MEMS switches integrated with sealed suspended coplanar waveguides for reconfigurable RF circuits

This paper describes an RF-MEMS switch structure and its fabrication process for developing low-loss multiport RF switches that integrate multiple RF MEMS switches and CMOS control circuits. In our structure, RF MEMS switches and coplanar waveguides are seamlessly integrated, and they are suspended above a CMOS LSI to reduce the loss due to the lossy Si substrate. A gold multilayer stacking technique was used to fabricate the structures, and the STP technique was used to seal them for damage-free packaging. Switching operation of RF MEMS switches was achieved and low insertion loss of 0.07 dB/mm at 5 GHz was obtained for the suspended coplanar waveguides.