Product category: Analogue and Mixed Signal ICs
News Release from: Memtronics Corp
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 9 May 2005
DARPA contract moves into second phase
Memtronics has entered the second phase of its three-year development contract from DARPA for robust, reliable RF MEMS capacitive switches
Memtronics Corp has successfully passed into the second phase of a $3.69 million, three-year development contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) entitled 'Robust, reliable RF MEMS capacitive switches'. Teamed with Memtronics on this project are Innovative Micro Technology (IMT), Lehigh University and Exponent.
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The focus of this contract is to improve the environmental robustness and reliability of radio frequency microelectromechanical systems (RF MEMS) operating under extreme environmental conditions.
Part of the Harsh Environment Robust Micromechanical Technology (HERMIT) Programme, the first phase of this contract recently culminated in the successful demonstration of a wafer-level packaging technology called 'wafer-level microencapsulation'.
This packaging scheme protects MEMS switches from the adverse effects of moisture and particles.
Further reading
MEMS startup wins share of DARPA project
Memtronics Corp has received a $3.69 million, three-year research contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) entitled "Robust, reliable RF MEMS capacitive switches"
The microfabricated packages have extremely low loss to frequencies as high as 100GHz and substantially reduce the packaging costs associated with RF MEMS switches.
Details of this packaging technology will be presented this summer at the upcoming ASME Interpack'05 conference in San Francisco.
The second phase of this contract will concentrate on improving the lifetime and reliability of packaged MEMS switches.
Memtronics is responsible for the overall design and development of the switches.
IMT, Memtronics' manufacturing partner, fabricates and packages the high-tech, ultra-low-loss RF switches.
Lehigh University provides cutting-edge research into the semiconductor physics of dielectric charging, the dominant mechanism limiting switch lifetime.
Exponent, a world-leader in MEMS reliability, provides expertise in failure analysis and accelerated reliability testing for the team.
Together, this team will push switch reliability well past the current state-of-the-art lifetime of 100 billion cycles.
The environmentally robust, packaged MEMS switch technology being developed on this programme is broadly applicable to wide variety of RF and wireless systems in the microwave and millimetre-wave frequency ranges.
This switch technology enables significant size, weight, and cost reductions for electronically scanned antenna arrays and tunable filter circuits for both military and commercial applications.
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