Fabrication of an Au–Au/carbon nanotube-composite contacts RF-MEMS switch

Abstract

Abstract This study aims to propose a new fabrication method for an ohmic contact type RF-MEMS switch with Au–Au/carbon nanotube (CNT)-composite contacts. These contacts are proposed to improve the reliability and the high-power handling capability of the ohmic contact type RF-MEMS switch. During the fabrication, we applied Au/CNT-composite electroplated film to the contact area in the signal line, whereas Au electroplating was used to form contacts under the cantilever of the switch. We investigated the influence of the Ar ion beam etching angle on metal layers formation and optimized the Ar ion beam etching conditions to achieve a more reliable RF-MEMS switch. We designed, fabricated, and evaluated an RF-MEMS switch to demonstrate the feasibility of our new fabrication method. We successfully fabricated an Au–Au/CNT-composite contact RF-MEMS switch; it exhibited a low insertion loss of less than 0.7 dB at frequency up to 40 GHz and a cycle life 2.7 times longer than that of an Au–Au contact switch.

Keywords

• RF-MEMS switch
• Au/CNT-composite layer
• Reliability
• Ar IBE process optimization