Proceedings of International Conference on Circuits, Communication, Control and Computing (I4C 2014)

Design and Simulation of Multi-beam RF

MEMS Varactor
Lakshmi.S1, Sudha Rao2 ,Dr.Premila Manohar3, Dr.P.Naga Sayanu4
1. Associate Professor, Department of E&C, M S Ramaiah Institute Of Technology, Bengaluru,
Karnataka,India,
2. M.Tech Scholar, Department of E&C, M S Ramaiah Institute Of Technology, Bengaluru
,Karnataka,India,
3. Professor and Head, Department of Electrical and Electronics, M S Ramaiah Institute of
Technology,
4. Professor, JNTU, Hyderabad

Abstract-Modern wireless communication systems require high
quality Varactors exhibiting wide tuning range at GigaHertz
level. Varactors implemented using micro mechanical systems
show superior performance compared to their semiconductor
counterparts. Parallel plate varactors are simplest to implement
and give higher capacitance range compared to the other types of
MEMS varactors.Parallel plate varactors have been used with
multiple beam architecture in order to improve the performance
parameters such as tuning range and quality factor. The
Multiple beam Structure proposedhere increases the capacitance
range and hence increases the Tuning Range of the varactor. The
capacitance Range is increased from 0.064pF from a single beam
structure to 0.448 pF for a seven beam structure.
Index TermsRF MEMS, Q-factor, Tuning Range, Pull-in.
capacitance of each arm of the switched bank. Series switches
for switching between capacitors were used. However, DC-
contact switches have a resistance of 12and can seriously
degrade the Q of the switched capacitor bank.
This paper proposes RF MEMS Varactor based on
electrostatically actuated fixed-fixed beam structures. The
number of parallel plates used varies from single plate to
multi-plate structures. The proposed structures will result in an
increase in tuning range as all capacitance between plates is
derived in parallel.The proposed structures have been
analyzed for tuning range using FEM analyzer tool
Coventorware

II WORKING PRINCIPLE OF VARACTOR

I.INTRODUCTION
A MEMS varactor consists of two parallel plates with one
Varactors are used as voltage-controlled capacitors. They are
plate fixed and the other suspended by means of a spring as
commonly used in parametric amplifiers, oscillators and
shown in Fig.1. . When a voltage V is applied between the
voltage control oscillators and as part of phase locked loops
two plates,the capacitance between the plates results in an
and frequency synthesizers. Varactors implemented using
electrostatic force between them. By changing the applied
micro electro mechanical system(MEMS)technology have
potential, the gap between the plates is varied resulting in the
emerged as viable alternatives to Semi-conductor Varactors
variation in capacitance.
due to their high quality factors (Q) and superior tenability[1].
They also exhibit better voltage linearity compared to their
semiconductor counterparts [3-6].

Aparallel plate MEMS capacitor with the capacitance change

of 15% was first proposed in [3] and was limited by parasitic
Capacitance. The measured Q was 60 at 1 GHz. The authors
of [2] have designed, fabricated and measured a continuously
tunable RF MEMS using dual gap height and using two
voltage sources allowing for electrostatic tuning with low
resistive loss and a large tuning range. Measurements indicate
a continuously tunable capacitance range of 6.2:1 with a
quality factor greater than 50 at 30GHz for 310fF. The authors
of [7] have developed a switched capacitor bank suitable for
0.1- to 6-GHz applications. This resulted in a capacitance Fig. 1.Spring-mass model of the varactorstructure
change from an initial Capacitance of C0 + 4Cu, Co + 15
Cbit..Here Co is the initial fixed capacitance and 4Cu is the By changing the applied potential, the structure is made to
capacitance of a 4 bit switched capacitor and Cbit is the operate as a variable capacitor.

MSRIT, BANGALORE, India, 21-22 NOVEMBER 2014 978-1-4799-6546-5/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE 308
Proceedings of International Conference on Circuits, Communication, Control and Computing (I4C 2014)
The value of the capacitance between the two plates can be
written as Table 2 Structure Dimensions

_________________ (1) Dimensions Bottom electrode Top electrode
(m) (m)
Where o is the permittivity of free space, A is overlapping
area between the two plates and go is the gap between plate
and x is the deflection due to the applied voltage. The Length (l) 100 500
variation of capacitance with respect to voltage is however
limited to a voltage called the pull-in voltage Vp above which Breadth (b) 100 100
the top plate just snaps down on the lower plate. This is due to
the positive feedback with the increase in voltage. This Thickness (w) 2 1
phenomenon occurs at a gap which two thirds the initial gap
go. The pull-in voltage is given by [1] as

_____________(2)

where k = spring constant,W= width of bottom plate and

w= width of top plate.

The tuning range of this design is limited to 1.5:1 because of

the pull-in effect and is given as

1.5 (3)

where TR is the tuning range andCmaxrepresents the maximum
capacitance and Cmin represents the minimum capacitance.

III.PROPOSED RF MEMS VARACTOR

The proposed RF MEMS Varactor is based on electrostatically Fig.2 Single beam Varactor
actuated fixed-fixed beam structures. Figure 2 shows a fixed-
fixed beam as the top electrode and an anchored bottom
electrode. The analysis has been performed for tuning range
from single beam to multi beam structures. The process flow
used for the fabrication of the said structure using gold beam
structure for both top and bottom electrode is as givenin Table
1.The gap between the bottom and top plate is 3m. The
dimensions of the structure are given in Table2.
Figure 2 shows the meshed beam structure of a single beam
varactor while Fig 3 indicates the seven beam design with all
beams connected by a central beam.

Table 1 Process Flow

Fig.3 Seven beam Varactor

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Proceedings of International Conference on Circuits, Communication, Control and Computing (I4C 2014)

IV.RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The Simulation tool COVENTORWAREis used in the

analysis of Multi beam RF MEMS Varactor. It performs finite
elemenht analysis to discretize the actual geometry of
structure using a collection of finite elements. Each of these
finite elements are joined by shared nodes. The collection of
nodes and finite elements is called as a mesh. The analysis
has to be performed for a coupled domain involving both
mechanical and electrical domain. Figure 4shows the
displacement of the top beam at pull-in voltage for single
beam varactor.
Figure 5 shows the C-V curve for the same structure. The C-
V curve show a capacitance range of 0.03519pF to 0.064pF.
By increasing the number of beams an increase in the
capacitance tuning range is expected. Thereforethe simulation
was performed from single beam upto seven beams in order to
ascertain the increase in tuning range due to multiple beam
structures.
Figure 6 shows the displacement of the seven beam structure
at pull-in. Thecharacteristics for the same structure is shown
by the C-V curve.
Consolidation of results from one beam to seven beams is
given by Figure 8. The capacitance range for one beam Fig.5 Plot of Voltage vs. Capacitance for single beam
Structure
varactor is only from 0.03519pF to 0.064 pF. However the
range increases as the number of beams used in the structure
increases. For a seven beam structure the range is from
0.2495pF to 0.44801 pF.This increase is attributed to the
increase in the electrode area.The plot clearly shows an
increase in tuning range as the number of beams used for
varactor realization has been increased from one to seven.

Fig.4.Single beam design showing displacement Fig.6. Seven beam design showing displacement

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Proceedings of International Conference on Circuits, Communication, Control and Computing (I4C 2014)
and hence the capacitance range increases.. The capacitance
range is increased from 0.064pF for a single beam structure to
0.448pF for a seven beam structure This type of structure
requires synchronization of actuation voltage applied to all
beams which could be a disadvantage. This can be overcome
by using beams of different lengths so that the actuation
voltages of beams will vary based on their length.

REFERENCES

[1] G. M. Rebeiz, RF MEMS Theory, Design and Technology,

John Wiley & Sons Inc., New Jersey, 2003.
[2] Greg McFeetors and Michal Okoniewski Performance and
operation of stressed dual gap RF MEMS varactors.36th
Microwave conference, Page(s): 1064 - 1067

[3] J. Young, Bernhard E. Boser A Micromachined variable capacitor

for Monolithic Low Noise VCOs IEEE Solid State Sensor and
Actuator Conference, pp 86-89, 1996

[4] A Dec and Ken Suyama,RF micromachinedvaractor with wide

tuning range,IEEE RFIC symp.Dig1,pp309-312,June 1998.

[5] A Dec and Ken Suyama, Micromachined Electro-Mechanically

Fig.7 Voltage vs. Capacitance for seven beam Tunable Capacitors and Their Applications to RF ICs, IEEE
structure Transaction On Microwave Theory And Techniques, vol. 46, no.
12, pp. 2587-2596, Dec. 1998.

[6] A.Dec and Ken SuyamaMicrowave MEMS based Microwave

0.5 Oscillators, IEEE Transaction on Microwave Theory and
Techniques,Vol 48 no.11,pp1943-1949, Nov 2000.
Capacitance of Beams in pF

0.45
[7] C. L. Goldsmith, A. Malczewski, Z. J. Yao, S. Chen, J. Ehmke,
and D. H. Hinzel,RF MEMS variable capacitors for tunable
0.4 filtersInt. J. RF Microwave CAE Vol.9, pp. 362374, July 1999.

0.35 [8] Coventorware 10.0 MEMS Design and Analysis Tutorial

0.3 C of 1 Beam
C of 2Beam
0.25 C of 3Beam
C of 4Beam
0.2 C of 5Beam

0.15 C of 6Beam
C of 7Beam
0.1

0.05

0 voltage across
5 beamsl 10 15

Fig.8. Plot of variation in voltage versus capacitance for single beam to seven
beam varactors

V.CONCLUSION
In this paper the design and simulation of single beam to
Multiple Beam varactors has been reported. It is observed that
as the number of beams increases, the effective area increases

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