High cut-off frequency RF switches integrating a metal-insulator transition material

Abstract

We present the design and the RF performances of two-terminals in-plane RF switches based on dioxide vanadium (VO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> )-phase transition material. The VO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> material undergoes a thermally-driven metal-insulator transition showing a resistivity variation up to five orders of magnitude as the material changes between its insulator and metallic states. We realized inline RF switches integrating VO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> patterns of different lengths (3 to 20 μm) and investigated their switching properties for both thermal and electrical actuation. For a thermally actuated 3-μm length VO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> pattern switch we measured an off-state capacitance of 7.7 Ff and an on-state resistance of ~2 Ω, with a cut-off frequency higher than 10 THz.