Study on Static Deflection Model of MEMS Capacitive Microwave Power Sensors

Abstract

In this paper, a static deflection model of MEMS cantilever beam is proposed, which can better study the force deformation of micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) cantilever beam and the output characteristics of capacitive microwave power sensor. The deflection curve is used to describe the deformation of the cantilever beam and then the overload power and sensitivity of this power sensor are derived. It is found that the overload power decreases with the beam length, and increases with the initial height of beam. The sensitivity increases with the beam length, and has a linear growth relationship with the measuring electrode width. A MEMS dual-channel microwave power sensor is designed, fabricated and measured. At a microwave signal frequency of 10 GHz, the sensitivity of the sensor is measured to be 0.11 V/W for the thermoelectric detection channel and 65.17 fF/W for the capacitive detection channel. The sensitivity calculated by the lumped model is 92.93 fF/W, that by the pivot model is 50.88 fF/W, and that by the deflection model proposed in this work is 75.21 fF/W. Therefore, the theoretical result of the static deflection model is more consistent with the measured result and has better accuracy than the traditional lumped model and pivot model.