Micromachined variable capacitors with laterally positioned suspended plates

Qingquan Liu; Qing-An Huang

doi:10.1117/12.444725

15 October 2001 Micromachined variable capacitors with laterally positioned suspended plates

Qingquan Liu, Qing-An Huang

Proceedings Volume 4601, Micromachining and Microfabrication Process Technology and Devices; (2001) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.444725
Event: International Symposium on Optoelectonics and Microelectronics, 2001, Nanjing, China

Abstract

A micromachined variable capacitor consisting of a suspended plate and a bottom plate fixed on the substrate is proposed as an alternative to vertically movable micromachined capacitors used for wireless communication systems. The suspended plate is driven laterally by thermal actuator arrays. The overlapped area of the two plates is changed so that the capacitance is tuned by an input voltage less than 4 V. Finite element method is used here to analyze the device. The capacitor exhibits a variation from 5.6 fF to 10.3 fF. For getting a capacitance large enough for radio frequency (RF) applications, the plates are periodically arranged to build an array. The capacitance of the array is tuned from 0.58 pF to 0.78 pF. In order to improve the linearity and increase the variation range, design modifications are made.

Citation Download Citation

Qingquan Liu and Qing-An Huang "Micromachined variable capacitors with laterally positioned suspended plates", Proc. SPIE 4601, Micromachining and Microfabrication Process Technology and Devices, (15 October 2001); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.444725

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