New micromachined membrane switches in silicon technology

Abstract

This paper presents a new generation of micromachined membrane switches containing a glass substrate and a silicon membrane. Upon external actuation, two planar substrate contacts are closed by a metal layer deposited on the switching membrane. The switching position is constant to better than 1 /spl mu/m and has been observed to move about 0.7 /spl mu/m over the achieved lifetime of 20 million electromechanical cycles under electrical loads of 12 V and 10 mA.