MEMS tunable capacitors with fragmented electrodes and rotational electro-thermal drive

This paper reports on the design, simulation and fabrication of tunable MEMS capacitors with fragmented metal (AlSi 4%) electrodes. We examine a rotational electro-thermal actuation. An analytic model of the rotational effect thermal actuator was established in order to show the periodicity of the capacitance when the angle increases. Evaluation of the impact of fringing fields on the capacitance has been carried out using finite element analysis (FEA). The MEMS capacitors were fabricated using metal surface micromachining with polyimide sacrificial layer. The maximum rotation, corresponding to a maximum angle of 7°, was obtained near 1.2 V and 299 mA. The proposed capacitor has a practical tuning range of 30%. FEA has shown that this figure can be improved with design optimization. The MEMS architecture based on rotational effect and fragmented electrodes does not suffer from the pull in effect and offers a practical solution for future above-IC capacitors.