On-line Magazine 'Sensors & Transducers' (S&T e-Digest)

    (ISSN 1726- 5479)

Vol. 70, Issue 8, August 2006, pp. 655-660

A Novel Structure for MEMS Based Varactors

Ebrahim Abbaspour-Sani, Naser Nasirzadeh, G.Dadashzadeh

Department of the electrical engineering, Urmia University, Urmia Iran

Fax: +98 441 345 1037, E-mail: e.abbaspour@mail.urmia.ac.ir

Received: 30 July 2006   /Accepted: 22 August 2006   /Published: 27 August 2006

Abstract. A novel structure with electro-mechanically tunable capacitor for RF application is presented. The suspended electrodes are designed in such a way that both are electrostaticaly displaceable. This double plate moveability feature of the capacitor increases the tuning range. In this structure, there is no need for cantilever beams, which introduce considerable series resistance to the capacitor and decrease the quality factor. Therefore, our proposed varactor achieves better Q in a smaller area. The simulated one pF capacitor shows a Q of 40 at 1 GHz and a tuning range of 42%. Pull-in voltage is 3.6 V, which is a reasonable value for submicron CMOS technologies.

Keywords: RF-MEMS, high-Q, tunable capacitors, electrostatic

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