MEMS relays

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Greg 19 years ago

Hi I'm looking for MEMS relays. I found 3 manufactures who does such things: TeraVicta,Memtronics and some other..I've written some mail to them, but till now - without response.. So I wander, if U know some other source of such components...

The standard, electromechanical ones have too short lifetime for me - I ned to switch them at least once per second.Moreover, they will be exposed to the radiation, so semiconductor ones would die quite soon. Another fact is, that voltage I need to switch is about 20..30V, sometimes up tp 100V. So MEMS are the only alternative to reed relays that comes to my mind. Any ideas? Thanks in advance Greg

--------------------------------------------------- Grzegorz Kasprowicz CERN AB-BDI-PI, bld037-18 CH1211 Geneva 23 tel: +41227674930 fax: +41227678200

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Homer J Simpson 19 years ago

Vacuum tubes?

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Greg 19 years ago

well, it must be small, i need plenty of them on PCB... tubes have quite poor isolation for RF, and take too much space. Their lifetime is also quite low - it must work for a few years.

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Steve Goldstein 19 years ago

Your operating rate and desired lifetime imply an operating life of at least

10^8 cycles, maybe more. Are you hot-switching? If so, how much current? This is the death of relays, especially MEMS ones. And last I heard MEMS relay lifetimes were still in the 10^7--10^8 range under cold-switching conditions, so you may not find what you want just yet.

How about CMOS-on-Silicon? Does it still exist? It was developed for military usage and space, so perhaps the radiation wouldn't be too troublesome. You'd certainly get the operating reliability...

Steve

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Greg 19 years ago

this is just signal, short pulses, a a few ns.... a few tens of us max, period - a few Hz

this would be acceptable

there is problem with voltage of a few tens V. And RF isulation is not enough. But possibly I have take them into account and possibly change conception of signa llayout.

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Hal Murray 19 years ago

In the (very) old days, tubes were used as amplifiers in undersea cables so I expect their lifetime may be reasonable..

I remember a story about another undersea cable going in after transistors were available. They used tubes because they knew how long they would last but transistors hadn't been around long enough to establish good lifetime data.

Anybody else remember that story?

These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.

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MEMS relays

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