High aspect ratio MEMS capacitor for high frequency impedance matching applications

We present a microelectromechanical tunable capacitor with a low control voltage, a wide tuning range and adequate electrical quality factor. The device is fabricated in a single-crystalline silicon layer using deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) for obtaining high-aspect ratio (> 20) parallel comb-drive structures with vertical sidewalls. The process sequence for fabrication of the devices uses only one lithographic masking step and can be completed in a short time. The fabricated device was characterized with respect to electrical quality factor, tuning range, self-resonance frequency and transient response and it was found that the device is a suitable passive component to be used in impedance matching applications, band-pass filtering or voltage controlled oscillators in the Very High Frequency (VHF) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF) bands.