DEVELOPMENT OF PIEZOELECTRIC RF-MEMS SWITCH DRIVEN BY LOW OPERATING VOLTAGE

摘要

This paper presents the possibility of piezoelectric RF-MEMS switches for low voltage operation. The switches we fabricated consist of micro-cantilevers using PZT thin films with the length of 490 μm and the width of 87 μm. The cantilevers are actuated as unimorph actuators that can be deflected by applying voltage between upper and lower electrodes. We could obtain large tip deflection of 3 μm even at the low voltage of 5.0V, which is well compatible with conventional IC drivers. This result indicates that the RF-MEMS switches using piezoelectric PZT thin films is advantageous to the low voltage switching devices in RF components compared with conventionally proposed electrostatic ones.