Design and simulation of a novel electro-thermally actuated lateral RF MEMS latching switch for low power applications

A new lateral electro-thermally actuated latching RF MEMS switch is presented in this paper. In contrast to conventional electrostatic or electro-thermal MEMS switches which require an actuation voltage to hold the switch in on or off state, this switch has a true mechanical latching design in such a way that there is no power required to hold the switch on or off. The switch structure only consumes power while transition between states. In order to satisfy low voltage operation, electro-thermal actuators are chose as the drive and latching actuators of the switch. The required actuation voltage for drive and latching actuators is 6 V. The switch consumes a power of <99 mW while transition from off to on state and also consumes a power of 46 mW for 0.3 ms in transition from off to on states. FEM simulations show that the return loss of the switch is below −10 dB up to 140 GHz and is below −20 dB up to 40 GHz. The insertion loss of the switch is less than −1 dB up to 150 GHz. The switch isolation when it is off is below −20 dB up to 160 GHz. The switch has potential applications in low voltage, low power and high performance RF tuning and switching applications.