Starting in the early 1960’s, when the integrated-circuit (IC) technology was developed, micromachining and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have grown into a broad research field with several commercial successes. Typical applications of MEMS are in physical, chemical and biochemical sensors, as well as in optical systems such as the digital micromirror device of Texas Instruments. From t...

This paper discusses issues relating to the reliability and methods for employing high-cycle life testing in capacitive RF MEMS switches. In order to investigate dielectric charging, transient current spectroscopy is used to characterize and model the ingress and egress of charges within the switch insulating layer providing an efficient, powerful tool to investigate various insulating material...

MicroElectroMechanical Systems for Radio Frequency applications (i.e. RF-MEMS) show very good performance and characteristics. However, their employment within large-scale commercial applications is still limited by issues related to the reliability of such components. In this work we present the Finite Element Method (FEM) modelling and preliminary experimental results concerning an active res...

Over the past few years, microelectromechanical system (MEMS) based on-chip resonators have shown significant potential for sensing and high frequency signal processing applications. This is due to their excellent features like small size, large frequency-quality factor product, low power consumption, low cost batch fabrication, and integrability with CMOS IC technology. Radio frequency communi...

We describe a wireless system for actuating and detecting the motion of MHz-frequency, low dissipation MEMS resonators. The overall system is essentially a custom-designed RFID-like system, with the tags based upon unique MEMS chips as opposed to conventional RFID chips. The MEMS devices are vacuum encapsulated, rugged, CMOS-compatible, and are approximately 1mm-by-1mm-by-0.5mm. The system is p...

The modeling of MEMS structures using MRTD is presented. Many complex RF structures have been inadequately studied due to limitations in simulation methods. The space and time adaptive grid, as well as the ability to handle intracell feature variations, makes MRTD an ideal method for modeling these structures. MRTD is shown to be able to handle the complex structures found in modern wireless an...