Design of a Wide Tuning Range Micromachined Tunable Capacitor for Wireless Communications
نویسنده
چکیده
We present results on the development a new micro electromechanical parallel plate tunable capacitor with a wide tuning range. Different from conventional parallel plate tunable capacitors, this new tunable capacitor consists of one suspended movable top plate and two fixed plates. One fixed plate and the top plate form the variable capacitor, while the other, together with the top plate, is used to tune the variable capacitor by electrostatic actuation. The spacings between the top plate and the two fixed plates are 2μm and 3μm, respectively. A wide tuning range of 85% is achieved when a DC driving voltage of 18 volts is applied, exceeding the theoretical tuning range limit (50%) of the conventional two-parallel-plate tunable capacitors. By using Pyrex glass wafer as the substrate and metal (gold and Ni-Fe) as the structure materials, the tunable capacitor has very low loss (< 0.1 dB) at 5 GHz. The fabrication of this tunable capacitor is completely compatible with the existing IC (integrated circuit) fabrication technology, which makes it useful in integrated circuits for wireless communication applications.
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