TY - GEN
T1 - A novel thermal switch design by using CMOS MEMS fabrication process
AU - Chou, Lei Chun
AU - Lai, You Liang
AU - Juang, Ying Zong
AU - Tsai, Chun Yin
AU - Lin, Chun Ying
AU - Huang, Sheng-Chieh
AU - Chiou, Jin-Chern
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - The present study focuses on implementing a novel CMOS-MEMS thermal switch by using commercially available TSMC 0.35 μm two-poly four-metal (2P4M) CMOS process. There are two novel designs in this paper: first, the soft contact structure and post-processing fabrication; second, a new design of thermal actuator. To create the soft contact structure, residual stress effect has been utilized to make different bending curvatures. According to the experiments, the layer Metal1 has the largest residual stress [1] effect that can achieve the largest deflection in z-axis. Because the residual stress of the layer metal-1 is negative, the structure will bend down after release, the largest contact area which has been set up to get the lowest contact miss ability. In the post-processing fabrication, 0.3μm thickness gold will be patterned on the contact tips. Due to gold, rather than Aluminum, has no oxidation issue, it has more reliability on preventing the problem of oxidation than Aluminum. In the new thermal actuator design, we design a novel folded-flexure [2, 3] with the electrothermal excitation to turn the switch on or off. In the prototype, the device size is 500 μm * 400 μm and the gap between two contact pads is 9 μm in off-state. Depending on the simulation results, the switch can work stably at 3 volts, and the working temperature and operating bandwidth are individually 20-200 °C.
AB - The present study focuses on implementing a novel CMOS-MEMS thermal switch by using commercially available TSMC 0.35 μm two-poly four-metal (2P4M) CMOS process. There are two novel designs in this paper: first, the soft contact structure and post-processing fabrication; second, a new design of thermal actuator. To create the soft contact structure, residual stress effect has been utilized to make different bending curvatures. According to the experiments, the layer Metal1 has the largest residual stress [1] effect that can achieve the largest deflection in z-axis. Because the residual stress of the layer metal-1 is negative, the structure will bend down after release, the largest contact area which has been set up to get the lowest contact miss ability. In the post-processing fabrication, 0.3μm thickness gold will be patterned on the contact tips. Due to gold, rather than Aluminum, has no oxidation issue, it has more reliability on preventing the problem of oxidation than Aluminum. In the new thermal actuator design, we design a novel folded-flexure [2, 3] with the electrothermal excitation to turn the switch on or off. In the prototype, the device size is 500 μm * 400 μm and the gap between two contact pads is 9 μm in off-state. Depending on the simulation results, the switch can work stably at 3 volts, and the working temperature and operating bandwidth are individually 20-200 °C.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80053322002&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/NEMS.2011.6017332
DO - 10.1109/NEMS.2011.6017332
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:80053322002
SN - 9781612847757
T3 - NEMS 2011 - 6th IEEE International Conference on Nano/Micro Engineered and Molecular Systems
SP - 213
EP - 216
BT - NEMS 2011 - 6th IEEE International Conference on Nano/Micro Engineered and Molecular Systems
T2 - 6th IEEE International Conference on Nano/Micro Engineered and Molecular Systems, NEMS 2011
Y2 - 20 February 2011 through 23 February 2011
ER -