Design, Performance and Qualification of a Commercially Available MEMS Switch

摘要

This paper presents an overview of the design and construction of the TT712 SPDT RF MEMS Switch, the first ever qualified RF MEMS production switch. The design and construction of the TT712 Switch includes three significant innovations: a proprietary high force disk actuator, unique device on package construction, and an in-line hermetic chip scale package. An overview of parametric test data is also included. Typical switches have 100 million cycle lifetime, 70 μsec switching speed, better than 10 mΩ trace resistance repeatability; 0.1 dB insertion loss, 35 dB return loss, and 30 dB isolation (all at 1 GHz) and can switch up to 30 W of RF power. To qualify this device, Teravicta has adapted semiconductor industry best practices to develop an appropriate methodology for RF MEMS switch qualification. This paper will review this RF MEMS Switch qualification methodology in some detail, and Prototyping of such a simple structure is also deceptively simple - and countless designs have been fabricated in small quantities. Execution of a reliable design that is capable of achieving commercial levels of performance and reliability is considerably more difficult, however, as evidenced by the fact that by 2001 more than 50 organizations worldwide had invested thousands of man-years in an attempt to commercialize a MEMS switch without producing a marketable product. Even within the past few years, a number of companies have introduced prototype devices into the market, only to withdraw them in the present representative data that demonstrates the successful qualification of the TT712 SPDT switch. Progress of work with the SEMI Standards Organization (MEMS Standards Committee) to develop a generic industry standard for RF MEMS Switch qualification is also discussed.