Electromechanical and microwave S-parameter properties of a wide tuning range MEMS tunable capacitor Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • We present the electromechanical and microwave properties of a novel micromachined parallel-plate tunable capacitor with a wide tuning range. Different from conventional two-parallel-plate tunable capacitors, this novel tunable capacitor consists of one suspended top plate and two fixed bottom plates. One of the two fixed plates and the top plate form a variable capacitor, whereas the other fixed plate and the top plate are used to provide electrostatic actuation for capacitance tuning. For the fabricated prototype tunable capacitors, a maximum tuning range of 69.8% has been achieved experimentally, exceeding the theoretical tuning range limit (50%) of conventional two-parallel-plate tunable capacitors. This novel tunable capacitor also exhibits very low return loss (< 0.6dB between 45 MHz and 10GHz).

published proceedings

  • 2001 International Conference on Modeling and Simulation of Microsystems - MSM 2001

author list (cited authors)

  • Chen, J., Zou, J., Liu, C., & Kang, S. M.

complete list of authors

  • Chen, J||Zou, J||Liu, C||Kang, SM

publication date

  • December 2001