High Q Zero Level Packaged RF-MEMS Switched Capacitor Arrays

Kevin Nadaud (1) , Fabien Roubeau (1) , Arnaud Pothier (1) , Pierre Blondy (1) , Lin-Yang Zhang (2) , Romain Stefanini (2)

1 XLIM-RFEI - RF-ELITE : RF-Electronique Imprimée pour les Télécommunications et l'Energie
2 AirMems

This paper presents the design, the realization and the measurement of a thin-film packaged RF-MEMS switched capacitors. Packaging is included in microelectronics fabrication process, with Silicon Nitride thin film. The capacitors are actuated by deflecting thin gold metal membrane towards the package dielectric, increasing the capacitance by a factor 2.47. The device size, including its packaging, is 80 × 90µm². The highest quality factor of a single capacitor is 1515 at 5 GHz, which comes from the low parasitic capacitance and the thick metallization. To obtain larger capacitance value, an array of 4 × 2 capacitors has been realized and measured.

Keywords: Microelectromechanical systems; Package; RF- MEMS; High-Q

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]; Electronics

Kevin Nadaud, Fabien Roubeau, Arnaud Pothier, Pierre Blondy, Lin-Yang Zhang, et al.. High Q Zero Level Packaged RF-MEMS Switched Capacitor Arrays. 11th European Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference (EuMIC 2016), Oct 2016, Londres, United Kingdom. ⟨10.1109/EuMIC.2016.7777588⟩. ⟨hal-01514626⟩