Engineering Commons^™

Micro Electromechanical Relays And Their Application In Variable Inductor Networks, Shifang Zhou

Dissertations

A family of microrelay devices together with integrated inductor networks has been designed, simulated, fabricated and experimental characterized. These switched networks utilize microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) as a fabrication technology and take advantage of the economies of semiconductor cleanroom batch-processing.

A new type of microrelay has been developed using a suspended TaSi₂/SiO₂ bimorph cantilever beam, gold-to-gold electrical contact, aluminum as sacrificial layer, and a combined thermal and electrostatic means of actuation. For the first time a micro variable inductor network which is digitally controlled by microrelays has been demonstrated. A test structure for electrical micro contact characterization has …