Tunable RF Devices Employing Phase Change Material (PCM) Technology

Phase change materials (PCM) are of great interest as they exhibit a phase transition from a semiconductor state to metal state through either thermal or optical excitation. They exhibit resistivity changes of several orders of magnitude as they change state exhibiting a thermal reversible transition such as Vanadium Oxides (VO2) or a thermal switchable-latching transition such as Germanium Telluride (GeTe). Over the past five years, there have been extensive research efforts to use them in RF applications. In particular, PCM-based RF switches combine the low insertion loss performance of MEMS technology and the small size and reliability performance of semiconductor technology. This talk addresses the use of PCM-based switches in the development of tunable filters, variable attenuators, and switched capacitor-bank for tunable impedance matching networks.