Abstract
This letter reports the design and development of a Conductive Bridging RF-Switch with simple fabrication steps without the use of any clean room technologies. The reported device is a fully passive shunt mode RF-Switch on a Co-Planar Waveguide (CPW) transmission line, which operates in the DC to 3GHz range. This particular topology is chosen in contemplation to limitations imposed by the chosen realization process. The device is based on a Metal-Insulator (electrolyte)-Metal (MIM) structure, with Copper-Nafion ®-Aluminum switching layers. S21 switching between-1dB (RF-On) and-16dB (RF-Off) is demonstrated till 3GHz by the device. DC pulses in the range 18V/0.5mA and-20V/0.1A are used respectively to SET and RESET the switch, and the instantaneous power consumed for SET and RESET is respectively 1.7µW and 3mW. The SET and RESET state DC resistance of the switch are observed as 2Ω and 2MΩ subsequently. The model is initially simulated using commercial FEM based Electromagnetic modeling tool and validated experimentally.