RF-MEMS switch with through-silicon via by the molten solder ejection method

A radio frequency-microelectromechanical system (RF-MEMS) switch with through-silicon via (TSV) technology for hermetic packaging was designed and developed using the molten solder ejection method (MSEM). High frequency simulation was used to determine the lowest loss of the shift-aligned ground-signal-ground (GSG) TSV structure. The RF-MEMS with shift-aligned TSV was successfully developed by integrating surface micromachining with MSEM. The electrical properties of RF-MEMS switches with the shift-aligned TSV were measured, and a low insertion loss of 0.1 dB at 15 GHz was achieved for a GSG TSV configuration. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.