Thin-film piezoelectric-on-substrate resonators and narrowband filters

A new class of micromachined devices called thin-film piezoelectric-on-substrate (TPoS) resonators is introduced, and the performance of these devices in RF and sensor applications is studied. TPoS resonators benefit from high electromechanical coupling of piezoelectric transduction mechanism and superior acoustic properties of a substrate such as single crystal silicon. Therefore, the motional impedance of these resonators are significantly smaller compared to typical capacitively-transduced counterparts while they exhibit relatively high quality factor and power handling and can be operated in air. The combination of all these features suggests TPoS resonators as a viable alternative for current acoustic devices. In this thesis, design and fabrication methods to realize dispersed-frequency lateral-extensional TPoS resonators are discussed. TPoS devices are fabricated on both silicon-on-insulator and thin-film nanocrystalline diamond substrates. The performance of these resonators in simple and low-power oscillators is measured and compared. Furthermore, a unique coupling technique for implementation of high frequency filters is introduced in which dual resonance modes of a single resonant structure are coupled. The measured results of this work show that these filters are suitable candidates for single-chip implementation of multiple-frequency narrow-band filters with high out-of-band rejection in a small footprint.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Farrokh Ayazi; Committee Member: James D. Meindl; Committee Member: John D. Cressler; Committee Member: Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb; Committee Member: Oliver Bran

Design and Implementation of Silicon-Based MEMS Resonators for Application in Ultra Stable High Frequency Oscillators

The focus of this work is to design and implement resonators for ultra-stable high-frequency ( \u3e 100MHz) silicon-based MEMS oscillators. Specifically, two novel types of resonators are introduced that push the performance of silicon-based MEMS resonators to new limits. Thin film Piezoelectric-on-Silicon (TPoS) resonators have been shown to be suitable for oscillator applications due to their combined high quality factor, coupling efficiency, power handling and doping-dependent temperature-frequency behavior. This thesis is an attempt to utilize the TPoS platform and optimize it for extremely stable high-frequency oscillator applications. To achieve the said objective, two main research venues are explored. Firstly, quality factor is systematically studied and anisotropy of single crystalline silicon (SCS) is exploited to enable high-quality factor side-supported radial-mode (aka breathing mode) TPoS disc resonators through minimization of anchor-loss. It is then experimentally demonstrated that in TPoS disc resonators with tethers aligned to [100], unloaded quality factor improves from ~450 for the second harmonic mode at 43 MHz to ~11,500 for the eighth harmonic mode at 196 MHz. Secondly, thickness quasi-Lamé modes are studied and demonstrated in TPoS resonators for the first time. It is shown that thickness quasi-Lamé modes (TQLM) could be efficiently excited in silicon with very high quality factor (Q). A quality factor of 23.2 k is measured in vacuum at 185 MHz for a fundamental TQLM-TPoS resonators designed within a circular acoustic isolation frame. Quality factor of 12.6 k and 6 k are also measured for the second- and third- harmonic TQLM TPoS resonators at 366 MHz and 555 MHz respectively. Turn-over temperatures between 40 °C to 125 °C are also designed and measured for TQLM TPoS resonators fabricated on degenerately N-doped silicon substrates. The reported extremely high quality factor, very low motional resistance, and tunable turn-over temperatures \u3e 80 °C make these resonators a great candidate for ultra-stable oven-controlled high-frequency MEMS oscillators

Nonlinear Forced Vibration of Piezoelectric and Electrostatically Actuated Nano/Micro Piezoelectric Beam

In this study, the nonlinear vibration analysis of nano/micro electromechanical (NEMS/MEMS) piezoelectric beam exposed to simultaneous electrostatic and piezoelectric actuation. NEMS/MEMS beam actuate with combined DC and AC electrostatic actuation on the through two upper and lower electrodes. An axial force proportional to the applied DC voltage is produced by piezoelectric layers present via a DC electric voltage applied in the direction of the height of the piezoelectric layers. The governing differential equation of the motion is derived using Hamiltonian principle based on the Eulere-Bernoilli hypothesis and then this partial differential equation (PDE) problem is simplified into an ordinary differential equation (ODE) problem by using the Galerkin approach. Hamiltonian approach has been used to solve the problem and introduce a design strategy. Phase plane diagram of piezoelectric and electrostatically actuated beam has plotted to show the stability of presented nonlinear system and natural frequencies are calculated to use for resonator design. The result compare with the numerical results (fourth-order Runge-Kutta method), and approximate is more acceptable and results show that one could obtain a predesign strategy by prediction of effects of mechanical properties and electrical coefficients on the stability and forced vibration of common electrostatically actuated micro beam

High Frequency Thermally Actuated Single Crystalline Silicon Micromechanical Resonators with Piezoresistive Readout

Over the past decades there has been a great deal of research on developing high frequency micromechanical resonators. As the two most common and conventional MEMS resonators, piezoelectric and electrostatic resonators have been at the center of attention despite having some drawbacks. Piezoelectric resonators provide low impedances that make them compatible with other low impedance electronic components, however they have low quality factors and complicated fabrication processes. In case of electrostatic resonators, they have higher quality factors but the need for smaller transductions gaps complicates their fabrication process and causes squeezed film damping in Air. In addition, the operation of both these resonators deteriorates at higher frequencies. In this presented research, thermally actuated resonators with piezoresistive readout have been developed. It has been shown that not only do such resonators require a simple fabrication process, but also their performance improves at higher frequencies by scaling down all the dimensions of the structure. In addition, due to the internal thermo-electro-mechanical interactions, these active resonators can turn some of the consumed electronic power back into the mechanical structure and compensate for the mechanical losses. Therefore, such resonators can provide self-Q-enhancement and self-sustained-oscillation without the need for any electronic circuitry. In this research these facts have been shown both experimentally and theoretically. In addition, in order to further simplify the fabrication process of such structures, a new controlled batch fabrication method for fabricating silicon nanowires has been developed. This unique fabrication process has been utilized to fabricate high frequency, low power thermal-piezoresistive resonators. Finally, a new thermal-piezoresistive resonant structure has been developed that can operate inside liquid. This resonant structure can be utilized as an ultra sensitive biomedical mass sensor

Modeling and Characterization of Three Kinds of MEMS Resonators Fabricated with a Thick Polysilicon Technology

Three different kinds of two-port flexural resonators, with both clamped and free ends, and with nominal resonance frequencies between 5 MHz and 50 MHz, were designed and fabricated. Among them, a novel free-free third-mode resonator, as well as a tunable free-free resonator, designed to maintain a high quality factor despite its tunability, are presented. Because of reduced energy loss in the clamps, higher quality factors are expected from free-free devices. To estimate the resonators performance, the effect of temperature and axial stresses on the resonators is investigated: for the clamped-clamped resonator, a theoretical model is also presented. FEM simulations are performed for the three geometries and the results are discussed

Nonlinear dynamics and applications of MEMS and NEMS resonators.

Rich nonlinear behaviours have been observed in microelectromechanical and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS) resonators. This dissertation has performed a systematic study of nonlinear dynamics in various MEMS and NEMS resonators that appear to be single, two coupled, arrayed, parametric driven and coupled with multiple-fields, with the aim of exploring novel applications. New study on dynamic performance of a single carbon nanotube resonator taking account of the surface induced initial stress has been performed. It is found that the initial stress causes the jumping points, the whirling and chaotic motions to appear at higher driving forces. Chaotic synchronization of two identical MEMS resonators has been theoretically achieved using Open-Plus-Closed-Loop (OPCL) method, and the coupled resonating system is designed as a mass detector that is believed to possess high resistance to noise. The idea of chaotic synchronization is then popularized into wireless sensor networks for the purpose of achieving secure communication. The arising of intrinsic localised mode has been studied in microelectromechanical resonators array that is designed intentionally for an energy harvester, which could potentially be used to achieve high/concentrated energy output. Duffing resonators with negative and positive spring constants can exhibit chaotic behaviour. Systematic calculations have been performed for these two systems driven by parametric pumps to unveil the controllability of chaos. Based on the principle of nanomechanical transistor and quantum shuttle mechanism, a high sensitive mass sensor that consists of two mechanically coupled NEMS resonators has been postulated, and the mass sensor which can be realized in large-scale has also been investigated and verified. Furthermore, an novel transistor that couples three physical fields at the same time, i.e. mechanical, optical and electrical, has been designed, and the coupled opto-electro-mechanical simulation has been performed. It is shown from the dynamic analysis that the stable working range of the transistor is much wider than that of the optical wave inside the cavity

Multiphysics modelling and experimental validation of microelectromechanical resonator dynamics

The modelling of microelectromechanical systems provides a very challenging task in microsystems engineering. This field of research is inherently multiphysics of nature, since different physical phenomena are tightly intertwined at microscale. Typically, up to four different physical domains are usually considered in the analysis of microsystems: mechanical, electrical, thermal and fluidic. For each of these separate domains, well-established modelling and analysis techniques are available. However, one of the main challenges in the field of microsystems engineering is to connect models for the behavior of the device in each of these domains to equivalent lumped or reduced-order models without making unacceptably inaccurate assumptions and simplifications and to couple these domains correctly and efficiently. Such a so-called multiphysics modelling framework is very important for simulation of microdevices, since fast and accurate computational prototyping may greatly shorten the design cycle and thus the time-to-market of new products. This research will focus on a specific class of microsystems: microelectromechanical resonators. MEMS resonators provide a promising alternative for quartz crystals in time reference oscillators, due to their small size and on-chip integrability. However, because of their small size, they have to be driven into nonlinear regimes in order to store enough energy for obtaining an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio in the oscillator. Since these resonators are to be used as a frequency reference in the oscillator circuits, their steady-state (nonlinear) dynamic vibration behaviour is of special interest. A heuristic modelling approach is investigated for two different MEMS resonators, a clamped-clamped beam resonator and a dog-bone resonator. For the clamped-clamped beam resonator, the simulations with the proposed model shows a good agreement with experimental results, but the model is limited in its predictive capabilities. For the dogbone resonator, the proposed heuristic modelling approach does not lead to a match between simulations and experiments. Shortcomings of the heuristic modelling approach serve as a motivation for a first-principles based approach. The main objective of this research is to derive a multiphysics modelling framework for MEMS resonators that is based on first-principles formulations. The framework is intended for fast and accurate simulation of the steady-state nonlinear dynamic behaviour of MEMS resonators. Moreover, the proposed approach is validated by means of experiments. Although the multiphysics modelling framework is proposed for MEMS resonators, it is not restricted to this application field within microsystems engineering. Other fields, such as (resonant) sensors, switches and variable capacitors, allow for a similar modelling approach. In the proposed framework, themechanical, electrical and thermal domains are included. Since the resonators considered are operated in vacuum, the fluidic domain (squeeze film damping) is not included. Starting from a first-principles description, founded on partial differential equations (PDEs), characteristic nonlinear effects from each of the included domains are incorporated. Both flexural and bulk resonators can be considered. Next, Galerkin discretization of the coupled PDEs takes place, to construct reduced-order models while retaining the nonlinear effects. The multiphysics model consists of the combined reduced-order models from the different domains. Designated numerical tools are used to solve for the steady-state nonlinear dynamic behaviour of the combined model. The proposed semi-analytical (i.e. analytical-numerical) multiphysics modeling framework is illustrated for a full case study of an electrostatically actuated single-crystal silicon clamped-clamped beam MEMS resonator. By means of the modelling framework, multiphysics models of varying complexity have been derived for this resonator, including effects like electrostatic actuation, fringing fields, shear deformation, rotary inertia, thermoelastic damping and nonlinear material behaviour. The first-principles based approach allows for addressing the relevance of individual effects in a straightforward way, such that the models can be used as a (pre-)design tool for dynamic response analysis. The method can be considered complementary to conventional finite element simulations. The multiphysics model for the clamped-clamped beam resonator is validated by means of experiments. A good match between the simulations and experiments is obtained, thereby giving confidence in the proposed modelling framework. Finally, next to themodelling approach for MEMS resonators, a technique for using these nonlinear resonators in an oscillator circuit setting is presented. This approach, called phase feedback, allows for operation of the resonator in its nonlinear regime. The closedloop technique enables control of both the frequency of oscillation and the output power of the signal. Additionally, optimal operation points for oscillator circuits incorporating a nonlinear resonator can be defined

Classical and fluctuation-induced electromagnetic interactions in micronscale systems: designer bonding, antibonding, and Casimir forces

Whether intentionally introduced to exert control over particles and macroscopic objects, such as for trapping or cooling, or whether arising from the quantum and thermal fluctuations of charges in otherwise neutral bodies, leading to unwanted stiction between nearby mechanical parts, electromagnetic interactions play a fundamental role in many naturally occurring processes and technologies. In this review, we survey recent progress in the understanding and experimental observation of optomechanical and quantum-fluctuation forces. Although both of these effects arise from exchange of electromagnetic momentum, their dramatically different origins, involving either real or virtual photons, lead to different physical manifestations and design principles. Specifically, we describe recent predictions and measurements of attractive and repulsive optomechanical forces, based on the bonding and antibonding interactions of evanescent waves, as well as predictions of modified and even repulsive Casimir forces between nanostructured bodies. Finally, we discuss the potential impact and interplay of these forces in emerging experimental regimes of micromechanical devices.Comment: Review to appear on the topical issue "Quantum and Hybrid Mechanical Systems" in Annalen der Physi