Cyclic evolution of bouncing for contacts in commercial RF MEMS switches

This paper systematically investigates for the first time the evolution of switch bounce for the Omron 2SMES-01 switch as a function of lifetime cycling. We demonstrate that the first bounce duration monotonically increases by as much as 20% over 200 million cycles. In addition, the amplitude of tertiary bounces monotonically increase by as much as 100 % over the same interval with the spontaneous occurrence of new bounces persisting as cycle count increases. Measurement of switch bouncing provides a readily accessible form of transient analysis of RF MEMS contacts and has the potential to become an indispensable tool for in-situ switch diagnostics related to adhesion forces, contact hardening, and film formation. A novel automated platform for studying both static and dynamic switch characteristics over the lifetime of an RF MEMS switch is demonstrated as well.