Design of micromachined high frequency circuit components

In this paper, the development of high frequency micromachined circuit components are described with an emphasis on the design and fabrication steps. These passive components have been fabricated using silicon micromachining processes which allow for the development of high-frequency circuits that have a monolithically integrated package. Some advantages of such configurations include reduction in the overall size and weight, improved isolation between neighboring circuits, minimized parasitic radiation effects, as well as increased circuit density due to the individual shielding of circuit geometries. In this paper, circuit design and fabrication issues with extensive discussions of the implemented design procedure and of the adopted micromachining processes are presented. Successful realization and performance of the circuit development is verified by comparison of on-the-wafer measurements to the modeled results in the 10-40 GHz frequency range.