A high-speed inkjet-printed microelectromechanical relay with a mechanically enhanced double-clamped channel-beam

We report a high-speed inkjet-printed three-terminal microelectromechanical (MEM) relay with a double-clamped beam that exploits the enhanced stiffness of the double-clamped structure to improve electrical performance. To minimize mechanical delay and pull-in voltage, the contact gap between the channel-beam and drain, and the stiffness of the beam and shape of the drain was carefully designed and optimized through a 3-D finite element simulation. The double-clamped beam prevents stiction-related failure between the channel-beam and drain despite the contact gap being only 370 nm for a > 500μm long beam. The resulting printed relay delivers a turn-ON delay of 8μs at a gate voltage of 10 V, a pull-in voltage of only 7.2 V, immeasurable off-leakage, excellent subthreshold swing, and a small hysteresis window of 2 V without any bending or collapsing of the beam. The device also shows reliable operation over 10⁵ cycles while maintaining a high ON/OFF ratio of 10⁸, and extremely low ON-state resistance of 3.7 Ω.