A high power latching RF MEMS capacitors bank

Abstract

A high power nickel based electroplated 4-bit RF MEMS capacitors bank is designed, fabricated and tested. The proposed design is capable to handle high power up to 30 Watts and utilizes co-planar transmission lines that use eight latching SPDT RF MEMS switches. The capacitors bank design is made of 4 cascaded bit units where every bit has two different paths, the first path is a conventional CPW while the second path is a CPW loaded with an inter-digitated capacitor. The measured maximum capacitance when all loaded CPW are engaged in almost 20 pF. The minimum measured capacitance however is 0.7 pF, at 1 GHz. The measured tuning ratio is around 28 times. The capacitors bank is built on high resistive silicon substrate using MetalMUMPs process.