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is shown
in Fig. 8(d). Hence, the RF signal can propagate not only
along the metal on the top surface, but also along the side-
Fig. 2. Schematic view of the SPDT switching circuit.
M. Tang et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 121 (2005) 187196 189
walls of the transmission lines. A 50 transmission line can
be obtained by simply adjusting, (1) the width of the sig-
nal line, S; (2) the width of the gap between the signal line
and the ground line, W; and (3) the width of the ground line,
G. In this circuit, parameters, S, W and G at each port were
selected to be 132, 34 and 300 m, respectively, to accom-
modate the 150 m-pitch ground-signal-ground coplanar
probes.
The lateral metal-contact switch placed at each output port
involves a cantilever beam in the direction of the signal line.
The top view of the cantilever beam is shown in Fig. 5 and its
cross-sectional view along BB
, is
30 m(see Fig. 2). At the free-end of the cantilever beam, one
ground line protuberates toward the cantilever beam to serve
as a xed electrode. Therefore no additional xed electrode
is required.
A dc bias voltage for actuation is applied between the
signal line and ground lines of the output port. When no
dc bias voltage is applied, the switch presents a very small
series capacitance between the two parts of the signal line.
This is equivalent to an RF open circuit which yields in high
isolation. This is known as open- or off-state. On the other
hand, when the applied dc bias voltage between the cantilever
beam and the xed electrode exceeds the pull-in voltage, the
cantilever beam is attracted toward the xed electrode by
the electrostatic force until its free-end touches the contact
tip, resulting in the propagation of the RF signal with mini-
mal loss. This is known as closed- or on-state. Once the bias
voltage is removed, the potential energy stored in the bent
cantilever beam provides the restoring force to pull the beam
away, hence switching the device off. Hence, by applying
bias voltage between the signal line and the ground lines at
ports 2 or 3, one lateral switch can be closed and the other is
kept open. Then the RF signal can propagate from input port
to one of the output ports.
2.2. RF circuit modelling
An equivalent circuit model shown in Fig. 3 was devel-
oped for a SPST MEMS switch. The circuit was modeled us-
ing Agilent EESofs Advanced Design System (ADS). The
model consists of: (1) characteristic impedance, Z
0
, of the in-
put and output sections of the FGCPW transmission line, (2)
the resistor, R
l
, of cantilever beam, (3) an inductor, L, of can-
tilever beam, (4) switch capacitor, C
S
(open-state) or contact
resistor, R
C
(closed-state), and (5) a coupling capacitor, C
g
.
C
g
is the coupling capacitance between the cantilever
beam and the xed electrode, which protuberates toward the
cantilever beam from the ground line. Fig. 4 shows the simu-
lated effect of C
g
on the S-parameters of the MEMS switch at
the open- and closed-state, respectively. Fig. 4(a) shows that
various capacitances, C
g
, only result in marginal differences
in the isolation of the switch at the open-state. Fig. 4(b) shows
that the insertion loss and return loss of the closed switch are
improved when C
g
increases from 10 to 60 fF. The perfor-
mance of the closed switch begins to deteriorate when C
g
is
increasing further to 125 fF. When C
g
is 60 fF, the insertion
loss and the return loss of the switch get to their optimal value
since a resonance occurs at the operating frequency range and
the losses only depend on the total resistance of the circuit.
C
g
can be estimated as:
C
g
=
0
l
2
t
g
+C
f
(1)
where
0
is the permittivity of the air (8.854 10
12
Fm
1
),
l
2
the length of the electrode part of the cantilever beam, t
the thickness of the beam, g the real-time distance of the gap
between two electrodes, and C
f
the fringing eld capacitance.
Therefore, to achieve good RF performance and low pull-in
voltage, careful consideration must be taken in selecting l
2
and g. Once the switch is actuated, the gap between the two
electrodes, g decreases. Hence the coupling capacitance at the
closed-state, C
g,close
is a little bigger than that at the open-
state, C
g,open
.
The cantilever beamresistance (R
l
), inductance (L), switch
open capacitance (C
S
) and closed resistance (R
C
), and shunt
capacitance (C
g
) are allowed to vary to t the model in the
measured S-parameters. Upon the determination of the model
parameters for the MEMSswitch, the SPDTswitching circuit
can be easily modeled by connecting the physical transmis-
Fig. 3. Equivalent circuit of the MEMS SPST switch.
190 M. Tang et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 121 (2005) 187196
Fig. 4. Simulated S-parameters of SPST switch with various capacitance C
g
at (a) open-state and (b) closed-state.
sion lines to the switch section at the appropriate distances
fromthe T-junction. The physical parameters for model of the
MEMS SPST switch in this work are summarized in Table 1.
2.3. Mechanical design
To design a micromachined circuit, the switching volt-
age is considered. The low actuation voltage can be achieved
through the optimization of the geometrical dimensions of
the actuation part. The top view of the electrostatic actuator
used in the circuit is shown in Fig. 5. The electrode part of the
cantilever beamw
2
is designed to be relatively wider than the
other part w
1
sothat lowpull-involtage canbe maintainedand
deformation of the electrode part of the beamcan be avoided.
Assuming the electrode part of the cantilever beam is subject
to a uniform load, the equivalent stiffness, k, of the cantilever
Table 1
Physical parameters for model of the SPST switch
Z
0
R
l
L C
S
R
C
C
g,open
C
g,close
50 0.4 145 pH 6.7 fF 0.6 20 fF 30 fF
Fig. 5. Top view of the electrostatic actuator.
beam has been derived using the following expression based
on the method of superposition [12].
k =
12E
1
E
2
I
1
I
2
[(
3
2
l
3
2
+2l
2
2
l
3
)E
1
I
1
+(4l
3
1
+9l
2
l
2
1
+6l
1
l
2
2
+6l
2
1
l
3
+6l
1
l
2
l
3
)E
2
I
2
]
(2)
where l
1
is the length of the narrow part of the cantilever
beam and l
3
the length from the end of the electrode to the
end of the beam. E
1
and E
2
are the Youngs moduli of the
narrow part and wide part of the beam, respectively. I
1
and I
2
are the moments of inertia of the cross-sectional area of the
narrow part and wide part of the beam, respectively. Before
the deposition of the metal, the beam is merely made up of
single-crystal-silicon. E
1
, E
2
, I
1
, and I
2
are given by
E
1
= E
2
= E
Si
(3)
I
1
=
1
12
w
3
1
t (4a)
I
2
=
1
12
w
3
2
t (4b)
where E
Si
is the Youngs modulus of the single-crystal-silicon
(140 GPa), w
1
and w
2
the widths of the narrow part and wide
part of the single-crystal-silicon beam, respectively. After the
deposition of Al, the beam is made of single-crystal-silicon
partially covered with Al. Therefore, E
1
, E
2
, I
1
, and I
2
can
be expressed as:
E
1
=
E
Si
w
1
+2E
Al
w
Al
w
1
+2w
Al
(5a)
E
2
=
E
Si
w
2
+2E
Al
w
Al
w
2
+2w
Al
(5b)
I
1
=
1
12
(w
1
+2w
Al
)
3
t (6a)
I
2
=
1
12
(w
2
+2w
Al
)
3
t (6b)
where E
Al
is the Youngs modulus of Al (70 GPa), w
Al
the
thickness of Al deposited at sidewalls of the silicon beam.
SinceE
Si
w
1
10E
Al
w
Al
, the equivalent stiffness is domi-
nated by the silicon structures.
Since the switching is carried out by an electrostatic force,
one has to know the relation between the electrostatic force
M. Tang et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 121 (2005) 187196 191
(F
e
) and the real-time distance (g) of the gap between the
ends of two electrodes. F
e
can be written as:
F
e
(g) =
0
l
2
tV
2
2g
2
(7)
where V is the applied voltage. At equilibrium, the electro-
static force F
e
is equal to the restoring force F
r
, which can
be written as:
F
r
(g) = k(g
0
g) (8)
where g
0
is the initial gap between the two electrodes. The
relation between g and the applied voltage V can be obtained
by solving the following equation:
F
e
(g) = F
r
(g) (9)
Eq. (9) can be used before the cantilever beambecomes unsta-
ble or g =2g
0
/3. However, when V is above a pull-in voltage,
V
p
, the real-time gap, g, cannot obtain a solution by solving
Eq. (9). The reason is the increase in the electrostatic force,
F
e
is greater than the increase in the restoring force, F
r
when
V > V
p
. As a result, the beam position becomes unstable and
abruptly collapses to touch the contact tip.
Fig. 6 shows the calculated pull-in voltage, V
p
, with var-
ious geometrical dimensions. It is found in Fig. 6(a) that V
p
is more dependent on the width of the narrow part of the sil-
icon beam w
1
than on the width of the wide part w
2
and the
metal thickness deposited at sidewalls w
Al
. The effect of the
wide part width of the silicon beam w
2
on V
p
is negligible
when w
1
w
2
. With Al deposited at sidewalls of the silicon
beam, V
p
increases when w
1
= 3.5 m and decreases when
w
1
> 3.5 m. The reason is the metal deposition causes two
effects. First, it increases the stiffness of the whole beam,
which tends to increase the restoring force, F
r
, and increase
V
p
. Second, it reduces the initial distance between the two
electrodes to g
0
2w
A1
, which tends to increase the electro-
static force, F
e
and reduce V
p
. Generally the change of the
pull-in voltage due to the metal deposition is less than 5 V.
Fig. 6(b) shows that the pull-in voltage V
p
increases as the
initial distance between the two electrodes g
0
increases. This
also shows that V
p
will not change signicantly when the
beam length ratio l
2
/(l
1
+l
2
) is in the range of 3070%. The
dimensions of the proposed switch are as listed in Table 2. We
can nd that the pull-in voltage, V
p
, of the proposed switches
is about 20 V before metal deposition and 23 V after 0.6 m
Al is deposited at sidewalls from Fig. 6(b). In this case,
the Al deposition will cause a 15% increase in the pull-in
voltage.
Fig. 6. Calculated pull-in voltage V
p
with (a) various beam widths (w
1
, w
2
)
and Al thickness at sidewalls (w
Al
), and (b) various length ratio of l
2
/(l
1
+l
2
)
and initial gap distance (g
0
).
The shape of the proposed cantilever beam with various
applied bias voltage is shown in Fig. 7, which is simulated
using commercial 3D simulation software: LS DYNA. In the
simulation model, to simplify the simulation the cantilever
beam is treated as one uniform material. The youngs moduli
and moments of inertia of the cantilever beam are given by
Eqs. (5) and(6). It is seenthat the bendingof the narrowpart of
the beam (X=0275 m) increases with higher applied bias
voltage, while the wide part of the beam (X=275450 m)
is kept straight and moves almost without deformation. The
simulated pull-in voltage is about 24 V, which is very close
to the calculated value.
Table 2
Design dimensions of the SPDT circuit
Parameters
S W G W
w
1
w
2
l l
1
l
2
l
3
g
0
d
0
Values (m) 132 34 300 30 2.5 5 450 275 165 10 6 4
192 M. Tang et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 121 (2005) 187196
Fig. 7. The shape of the proposed cantilever beam with various applied bias
voltage.
3. Fabrication process
The SPDT switching circuit was fabricated on SOI wafer,
which includes a 35 m low resistivity (LR) device active
Si layer (<0.1 cm), 2 m buried thermal silicon dioxide
(SiO
2
) layer and 500 mhigh resistivity (HR) handle Si layer
(>4000 cm). The process ow along AA
and BB
is
shown in Fig. 8. The process began with a SiO
2
of 2.0 m
deposition on a SOI substrate using plasma-enhanced chem-
ical vapor deposition (PECVD). Upon patterning of SiO
2
by RIE, the HR Si was etched through via DRIE from the
backside using 10 m photoresist as mask material (a). The
DRIE process was carried out using STS ICP etcher. After
that, another DRIE step was employed to etch the LR Si to
buried SiO
2
layer using the top SiO
2
as the hard mask. The
exposed SiO
2
was removed by buffered oxide etchant (BOE).
After rinsing with deionized water, the wafer was immersed
in the isopropyl alcohol (IPA) for 20 min to avoid stiction
problem at the narrow cantilever beam. The wafer was then
kept dry in room temperature (b). Then the SOI wafer was
temporarily bonded to a shadow mask [13] using photoresist
as intermediate material. Both wafer-to-wafer alignment and
bonding were performed in an Electronic Vision EV Aligner
and AB1-PV Bonder. The wafers were bonded under a pres-
sure of 1000 N for 10 min at room temperature. A 1.5 m
thick Al was deposited on the surface and sidewalls of the
circuit through the shadow mask (c). Finally, the bonded
wafers were heated at 150