| Title |
Torsional Micromechanical Switching Element Including Bumps for Reducing the Voltage Difference Between Pull-in and Release |
| Authors |
하종민(Ha, Jong-Min) ; 한승오(Han, Seung-O) ; 박정호(Park, Jeong-Ho) |
| Keywords |
a micromachined micromechanical switch ; bumps ; pull-in voltage ; release voltage ; Ni electroplating |
| Abstract |
ln this paper, a micromachined micromechanical switch is presented. The presented switch is operated in the vertical direction to the substrate by an electrostatic force between two parallel plates. The moving plate is pulled down to connect the bumps of the bias node(V_{DD}/ or GND) to the bumps of the output node when a oltage difference exists between the moving plate and the input plate. The switch was designed to operate at a low switching voltage(≒5V) by including a large-area, narrow-gap, parallel plate capacitor A theoretical analysis of the designed switch was performed in order to determine its geometry fitting the desired pull-in voltage and release voltage. The designed switch was fabricated by surface micromachining combined with Ni electroplating. From the experimental results of the fabricated switch, its pull-in voltage came Out to be less than 5V and the measured maximum allowable current was 150mA. The measured average ON-state resistance was about 8Ω, and the OFF-state resistance was too high to be measured with digital multimeter |