Silicon bulk micromachined electromechanical switches with four cantilever piezoelectric actuators

In this article, silicon bulk micromachined RF MEMS switch with four cantilever piezoelectric actuators has been designed, fabricated, and characterized for advanced mobile/wireless communication systems. The proposed switch is comprised of four piezoelectric cantilever actuators, a contact metal pad, and a suspended CPW signal line above the silicon substrate. The fabricated piezoelectric switch has an insertion loss of −0.23 dB and an isolation of −44 dB at a frequency of 2 GHz and an operation voltage of 2.5 V, respectively. Also, it has constant performance characteristics at the certain range of applied voltages above the operation voltage that result in high production yield. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 49: 570–573, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.22195