A study of field emission process in MEMS-based capacitor/switch-like geometries is presented. High resolution current–voltage characteristics up to breakdown have been obtained across micro-gaps in fixed– fixed Metal–Air–Metal and Metal–Air–Insulator–Metal structures. In metallic devices the I–V dependence reveals Fowler–Nordheim theory effects. In the presence of insulator the process is foun...

0026-2714/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. A doi:10.1016/j.microrel.2008.06.047 * Corresponding author. Address: LAAS CNRS, 7, Toulouse Cedex 4, France. Tel.: +33 561337900; fax: E-mail address: [email protected] (G. Papaioannou) The paper investigates the effect of 5 MeV alpha particle irradiation in RF MEMS capacitive switches with silicon nitride dielectric film. The investigation includ...

A new approach to wideband and smart re-configurable antennas using RF MEMS switches and fractal antennas is presented. Index Terms – Smart antennas, wideband, fractals, RF-MEMS.

In MEMS technology, most of the devices are fabricated on glass or silicon substrate. However, this research presents a novel manufacture method that is derived from conventional hot embossing technology to fabricate the electrostatic switches on polymer material. The procedures of fabrication involve the metal deposition, photolithography, electroplating, hot embossing and hot embed techniques...

The paper investigates the dependence of charging process on the dielectric charging of radiation induced defects in Si3N4 and SiO2 dielectric films, which are used in RF-MEMS switches. The radiation has been performed with 5 MeV alpha particles. The assessment has been carried out in Metal-Insulator-Metal capacitors with the thermally stimulated depolarization currents and discharge current tr...

 The use of MEMS electrical switches as miniature electrically resettable circuit breakers is described. A prototype based on nickel thermal actuators on silicon has been fabricated and tested, and the performance is compared to analytical models. Trip currents of ≈ 300 mA are obtained, with trip times less than 50 ms. Temperature dependence of trip current is shown to be below 0.2%/K. The rel...

In this paper we focus on electromechanical modeling of high-tuning range MEMS varactors with a focus on failures caused by residual compressive stress. In particular, we quantitatively evaluate for the first time a high-tuning range parallel-plate MEMS varactor in the presence of residual compressive stress. A 3D model generated in ANSYS agrees very favorably with the measured data and explain...

The use of MEMS electrical switches as miniature electrically resettable circuit breakers is described. A prototype based on nickel thermal actuators on silicon has been fabricated and tested, and thermo-mechanical analysis is presented showing the relation between design parameters and performance. Temperature dependence of trip current is shown to be below 0.2% K−1, and analysis is presented ...

We present a detailed study on an active thermal recovery mechanism intended to counteract stiction in an electrostatically actuated RF-MEMS switch. A problemadapted, hierarchized analysis procedure based on a recently derived and presented finite element (FE) model has been applied to investigate the impact of different design and material parameters on the efficiency of this mechanism as well...