Investigation of a Mechanical Contact Type RF-MEMS Switch for VHF Band Applications

This paper presents an investigation of a mechanical contact type RF-MEMS switch for VHF band applications. Different contact electrostatically actuated switches were analytically studied and simulated using CoventorWare FEM software. The switches were optimized for different parameters depending on the design geometry and the number of the actuator comb fingers. This work is an extension to the development of tuneable piezoelectric BAW resonators with the aim of achieving cost-effective tuneability over a wide frequency range based on a switchable array of these resonators. Thus, the switches were fabricated on the same PiezoMUMPs process as the resonators. Both two-state and three-state switches were investigated. In the case of the two-state switch, the simulated and experimental values of the actuation (pull-in) voltage were found to be 14 V and 17 V respectively.