Effect of the damping and stiffness on the switching time of a microcantilever based RF MEMS Switch.

Abstract

Dynamic Analysis of a micro-cantilever based MEMS (Micro-electro-mechanical systems) RF Switch using lumped parameter based modeling. The switching time of a RF (Radio frequency) switch is modeled based on the simple spring mass model. The resulting switching time is then compared for various parameters of modeling like stiffness, equivalent mass and damping that are obtained using various approaches. As the switching or actuation time for a MEMS based RF switch should be as small as possible; it was observed that the trade-off between the stiffness and damping is necessary and an optimal switching time should be one that leads to decrease in the vibrations of the beam and this can be achieved by increasing damping of the system. However that leads to the increase in the switching time. This is then compensated by increasing the stiffness which will lead to the increase in vibrations that is not desirable.