Simulation of Novel NEMS Contact Switch Using MRTD with Alterable Steps

In order to apply Radio Frequency Micro-nano-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS/NEMS) technologies to produce miniature, high isolation, low insertion loss, good linear characteristic, and low power consumption microwave switches, we present a novel NEMS switch with nanoscaling in this paper through the analysis of electrics and mechanics of the RF switch. The measured data show the pull-in voltage of 24.1？V and the good RF performance of the insertion loss of below ？10？dB at 0？GHz on the “on” state, and the isolation of beyond –40？dB at 0–40？GHz on the “off” state, indicating that the witch is suitable for the 0–40？GHz applications. Our analysis shows that the NEMS switch not only can work in wide frequency bands, but also has better isolation performance in lower frequency, thus extending the application to the lower band. The Haar-wavelet-based multiresolution time domain (MRTD) with compactly supported scaling function is used for modeling and analyzing the nanomachine switch for the first time. The major advantage of the MRTD algorithms is their capability to develop real-time time and space adaptive grids through the efficient thresholding of the wavelet coefficients. The error between the measured and computed results is below 5%, this indicated that the Haar-wavelet-based multiresolution time domain was suitable for simulating the nano-scaling contact switch. 1. Introduction As the key device of radio frequency or high frequency transmission systems, RF switch is widely used in civil and military applications of RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave circuits and systems. Previously, RF switching is implemented by using p-i-n diodes and GaAs MESFETs in the form of junction field-effect transistor- (JFET-)based semiconductor switches [1–4]. Recently, Radio frequency nano-electro-mechanical system (RF-NEMS) switches have attracted increasing attention over the traditional ones, due to their low insertion loss, high isolation, and low power consumption. NEMS switches are mainly categorized as contact and capacitive switches. In contrast with the capacitive one, such as the switch reported by [5, 6], the contact switch has a wider band down to the DC frequency. However, the cantilever structure of the contact switch is too sensitive to the stress of the dielectrics, adding to the fabrication difficulties [7, 8]. Researchers in the University of Michigan developed an all-metal broadside-series switch [5]. But this structure cannot avoid RF signal isolation, which results in rapidly degrading performance on high frequency band. Another dielectric membrane