Fabrication and accelerated hermeticity testing of an on-wafer package for RF MEMS Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • A hermetic silicon micromachined on-wafer dc-to-40-GHz packaging scheme for RF microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) switches is presented. The designed on-wafer package has a deembedded insertion loss of 0.03 dB per transition up to 40 GHz (a total measured loss of 0.3 dB including a 2.7-mm-long through line) and a return loss below -18dB up to 40 GHz. The hermeticity of the packaged is tested using an autoclave chamber with accelerated conditions of 130/spl deg/C, 2.7 atm of pressure, and 100% relative humidity. The fabrication process is designed so as to be completely compatible with the MEMS switch process, hence, allowing the parallel fabrication of all the components on a single wafer. The on-wafer proposed packaging approach requires no external wiring to achieve signal propagation and, thus, it has the potential for lower loss and better performance at higher frequencies.

published proceedings

  • IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • Margomenos, A., & Katehi, L.

citation count

  • 62

complete list of authors

  • Margomenos, A||Katehi, LPB

publication date

  • June 2004