I. Introduction
Despitetheir nearly-ideal high-frequency characteristics, lifetime of electrostatically actuated RF MEMS capacitive switches is limited by dielectric-charging effects [1]. To date, dielectric-charging effects in RF MEMS devices have been studied by different research groups [2]–[4]. We have proposed an approach to characterize the switch dielectric and extracted a charging model to predict charge injection and actuation-voltage shift at room temperature [2]. However, for switch applications in harsh environment (e. g., over the military temperature range of −55 to 125°C), temperature effects on charging also need to be modeled and characterized. In this paper, we present the results on temperature acceleration of the dielectric-charging effects in state-of-the-art RF MEMS capacitive switches. By using the methodology proposed in [2], a temperature-dependent charging model was extracted to predict the actuation-voltage shift under different temperatures and found to be in agreement with the experimental data.