Capacitive Microwave MEMS Switch

A novel capacitive microwave MEMS switch with a silicon/metal/dielectric as a membrane is fabricated successfully by bonding and etching-stop process.Its principal,design,and fabricating process are described in detail.A patterned dielectric layer,Ta2O5,with dielectric constant of 24 is reached.Experiment results show this novel structure,where the switch’s dielectric layer is not prepared on the transmission line,features very low insertion loss.The insertion loss is 0.06dB at 2GHz and lower than 0.5dB in the wider range from DC up to 20GHz,especially when the transmission line metal is only 0.5μm thick.