Abstract
Recently, the RF-MEMS (micro electro-mechanical systems) switch is required rapidly to be installed such as mobile information devices. Therefore, we have been investigating a bi-stable mechanical actuator in order to realize RF-switches. Our bi-stable actuator was three-terminal comb-drive actuators which has two comb-electrodes pull a moveable mass in each side and realize two static states. The distance between two stable states was 28 um. The potassium ion electret technique which has developed in our laboratory was utilized for low-voltage actuation. The electret potential was 135V. We reported previously that the minimum operation pulse voltage between two bi-stable positions was 13V (pulse width was 300 us). In this paper, we measured the switching voltage between two bi-stable positions with DC voltage (applied time was 10 s). As a result, the minimum operation step voltage was 4.5V.
