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Jan. 3, 2003 — When Bob Miracky started talking to potential customers about a radio frequency (RF) switch his company was developing that offered less signal loss than existing components, he didn’t emphasize that it was a MEMS device.
“Companies buy business solutions, not technology,” said Miracky, president of Teravicta Technologies Inc. of Austin, Texas, founded in 2000 as a spinoff from the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. “We simply asked how a low-loss RF switch might benefit them.”
With the Read-Rite Corp. of Fremont, Calif., now in place as a production partner and a distribution deal with Dow-Key Microwave Inc., of Ventura, Calif., announced in October, Teravicta expects to begin making and selling its switches in volume by the middle of 2003.
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Microlab Inc. of Chandler, Ariz., is another emerging player in the RF MEMS switch market. In September, the company announced a production deal for its MagLatch switch with PHS MEMS of Grenoble, France, and said it expects to begin production of its magnetically operated MEMS switch in early 2003.
The RF MEMS switch market “really comes down to Teravicta and Microlab,” said Marlene Bourne, a MEMS analyst with In-Stat/MDR. “It’s too early to say who will take the lead,” but Bourne believes there’s enough room for both to make it in an RF MEMS market that in August In-Stat forecast will grow to $200 million by 2006.
With Agilent Technologies Inc.’s growing success selling RF MEMS duplexers, Bourne said, In-Stat is likely to raise its market projections. “Agilent recently reported that it is selling a million RF MEMS devices a month across 30 mobile phone platforms,” Bourne said.
She added that Agilent’s success in the mobile phone sector bodes well for startups like Teravicta and Microlab, though RF MEMS switches may first find their way into automated testing equipment for the semiconductor industry.
Teravicta’s TT612 switch is a MEMS device with a micromachined cantilever that can rapidly bend like a diving board from an “off” to “on” position in response to an electrostatic signal. In mobile phones and other portable devices, the RF switch flips communications back and forth between transmit and receive modes.
Existing RF switches are solid-state semiconductor devices that turn on and off electronically. John Delfeld, Teravicta’s vice president of sales and marketing, explained that the electromechanical nature of the MEMS RF switch has performance advantages over the solid-state incumbents.
When the MEMS RF switch is “on,” the metallic connection passes on the signal with less degradation than solid-state switches.
Such a “low loss” switch should help reduce dropped cell phone calls and improve a device’s range. The company said it would have even greater performance advantages over solid-state switches made with gallium arsenide as signal frequencies increase in new wireless technologies such as 2.5 or 3G phone systems and Wi-Fi data networks.
The other competitive advantage Teravicta and Microlab’s MEMS switches offer is low power consumption. Teravicta said its device only uses a nanojoule of power when switching, and no power when in a steady state. Better power efficiency and smaller component size is increasingly important as device makers look to add features such as broadband data processing and color screens.
Teravicta’s RF switch will not, at least initially, be less expensive than conventional components, though company executives expect their device’s price to fall as they increase production volume.
Teravicta’s managers said that they tapped Dow-Key Microwave for its experience selling RF switches for use in everything from military and aerospace applications to telecom central office switching equipment and RF test machines such as oscilloscopes. But they noted they might strike other deals for market segments such as mobile phones or PDAs.
In coming months, Teravicta said, it will help its production partner Read-Rite — a leading maker of magnetic heads that read hard drives — integrate its surfacing micromachining process into Read-Rite fabs.
Miracky said that the company’s pilot production facility has produced prototypes for more than 12 companies that are looking at how they might incorporate Teravicta’s RF switch in their products.
Miracky declined to discuss other RF MEMS products Teravicta may consider developing, but components companies such as Agilent and IBM are working on include signal filters, tunable capacitors and inductors.
In-Stat’s Bourne foresees RF MEMS startups getting together to collaborate on integrating parts into complex subsystems that could speed industry integration of RF micromachines into consumer electronics.
For Teravicta, Miracky said, the immediate aim is “getting a packaged product, not a technology, out the door that validates the market’s need for a MEMS RF switch.”