Applied electrostatic parallelogram actuators for microwave switches usingthe standard CMOS process

This paper presents the fabrication of a laminated-suspension microwave swi tch using a conventional 0.6 mum single polysilicon three metals complement ary metal-oxide semiconductor process. The post-processing is completed wit h maskless dry etching. The micromachined microwave switch consists of two electrostatic parallelogram actuators, two T-type connectors and one coplan ar waveguide on a p-type silicon. substrate. The switch only requires a low dc voltage of around 18 V for electrostatic traction. The testing results of the microwave switch show that the insertion loss is 6.8 dB and isolatio n is -7.8 dB in the range 10-20 GHz. In addition to demonstrating the desig n and fabrication of the microwave switch. this paper summarizes the experi mental results.