Variability Study for Low-Voltage Microelectromechanical Relay Operation

Body-biased microelectromechanical relays previously have been developed for ultralow-power digital logic applications and demonstrated to reliably switch ON/OFF with sub-50-mV gate voltage swing. Since variability in relay switching voltages can practically limit reduction in the operating voltage of a relay-based integrated circuit, the effects of process-induced variations and device operating conditions, as well as the stability of relay switching voltages, are investigated in this paper. Antistiction coating is shown to stably reduce hysteresis voltage and random variation thereof, which is beneficial for voltage scaling.