Design and Fabrication of Non-Volatile Direct Heating RF High-Speed Switch Matrix Based on GeTe Phase Change Material

In this work, a 2 × 2 non-volatile direct heating RF switch matrix based on GeTe phase change material was innovatively designed and fabricated based on multilayer lithography process. The pulsed laser deposition-derived phase change materials (PCM) of GeTe exhibited high crystalline quality with no impurities observed. The GeTe-based RF switch can achieve “On” and “Off” operations under 300 ns electrical pulse of 4.9 V and 7.1 V voltage, respectively. Based on the fast response of the PCM switch, the 2 × 2 matrix was designed and fabricated. The measured S-parameter of the matrix demonstrate that the insertion loss of the two RF phase-change switch units in the “On” state are more than 0.63 dB, while the isolation of the two RF phase-change switch units in the “Off” state are less than 20.3 dB over the range of DC-35 GHz. This work provides novel ideas for the design of high-speed RF switches and matrices, the proposed GeTe thin film phase change switch matrix offers an effective approach for advanced large frequency range, multi-channel high-speed switching.