RF MEMS Component Production

摘要

This paper presents a view from the trenches of the active and expanding RF MEMS industry. XCOM RF MEMS technologies and manufacturing processes have achieved a level of maturity sufficient to release viable, attractive products to the marketplace. These components are simple, elegant, and functional, yet can be considered costly, conservative, and lackluster from the perspective of academic technical achievement. The parts are being sampled to eager customers in particular industries (test and instrumentation) who have not been able to achieve components from other sources internal or external. This represents a perfect (and long recognized) niche market entry for RF MEMS. The purchasing quantities and cycles for these customers is appropriate, sustainable, and can be made profitable through cost reduction in manufacturing. The RF MEMS industry is still immature, in that there are few merchant suppliers of components for any market. The critical commercialization issues of cost, yield, and system-level insertion and customer management are finally being tackled, now that the industry addresses packaging and reliability in "presently acceptable" and continuously improving ways. The single largest product cost factor and acceptance criteria still to be addressed by the RF MEMS industry surrounds screening and qualification. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that many Military and JEDEC standards for electronic RF/microwave components do not directly apply.