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MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) technology is becoming a crucial enabling technology for optical and RF telecommunication applications due to the performance, cost and integration advantages. All-optical switches and silicon optical benches for optical network systems and RF MEMS components such as RF MEMS switches, tunable capacitors, high Q inductors, and thin film bulk acoustic resonators for miniaturized single chip RF transceivers are discussed. Despite all the promising aspects, practical problems to be addressed for successful commercialization are not trivial. By reviewing optical and RF MEMS research activities and some of the implementation examples, key success factors of MEMS components for the commercialization are discussed.

A study of electrical breakdown across bias and top electrodes and its effect on the reliability of RF MEMS ohmic switches is presented. Tests under two situations were applied to study the electrical breakdown characteristic between bias and top electrodes, the first is the 10 h continuous stress under on state and the second is the voltage sweep from 0 V to 80 V. During the test, the switch ohmic contact resistance and current across bias and top electrodes were monitored simultaneously. Current across bias and top electrodes is observed in both of the two situations. Further analysis by FIB and SEM shows the breakdown damage on the surface of the bias electrode, which leads to the pull-in voltage shift of the RF MEMS ohmic switches.

RF MEMS phase shifter is a device that is used to modify the transmission phase of RF signal and provide signal control. Phase shifters are high-value components used in phased array antenna architectures. In phased array antenna the phase shifter is used to provide reliable electronic beam steering. The proposed 3-bit distributed MEMS transmission line (DMTL) phase shifter is designed using elevated coplanar waveguide (ECPW) transmission line for the first time, which results in better return loss of $-$14.23dB and an average insertion loss of $-$1.46dB. This paper discusses the development of ECPW-based 3-bit DMTL phase shifter designed to operate at 15GHz.

RF MEMS switches are attractive due to their perfect performances and very low fabrication costs. MEMS switch based reconfigurable antenna is one of main branches of its potential applications. In this paper, a new reconfigurable CPW inductively coupled slot antenna is designed and simulated. It is described how the RF signals can be switched to different antenna elements working on 15GHz and 20GHz respectively. Simulation results of the antenna element agree well with other contributors' experiments which show the validity of the simulations.

This paper reports a novel design of radio frequency microelectromechanical systems (RF MEMS) tunable bandpass filter (BPF), which is made up of two quarter-wavelength resonators, and each resonator is laterally loaded with two area-tuning tunable capacitors between the signal line and one of the grounds of the coplanar waveguide (CPW). The tuning range is between 8.3 GHz to 8.9 GHz, with 3.5 dB minimum insertion loss. The loss mainly comes from the thin coating metal layer and the coupling gap. The out of-band rejections at 8 and 10 GHz are higher than 25 dB in all the tuning range, and the return loss is better than 15 dB in passband.

MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) technology is becoming a crucial enabling technology for optical and RF telecommunication applications due to the performance, cost and integration advantages. All-optical switches and silicon optical benches for optical network systems and RF MEMS components such as RF MEMS switches, tunable capacitors, high Q inductors, and thin film bulk acoustic resonators for miniaturized single chip RF transceivers are discussed. Despite all the promising aspects, practical problems to be addressed for successful commercialization are not trivial. By reviewing optical and RF MEMS research activities and some of the implementation examples, key success factors of MEMS components for the commercialization are discussed.