PN-diode Transducers for High Performance Lateral Bulk-mode Silicon Microresonators

Description

Stable precise clocking devices form the heartbeat of almost every modern day electronic product for frequency control and timing applications. Owing to their temperature stability and high quality factor (Q), quartz crystals have been important timing references in consumer, commercial, industrial, and military products for many years. However, quartz crystals are difficult or close to impossible to be integrated onto silicon-based integrated circuit platforms. As such, there has been a strong interest in displacing quartz crystal technology with silicon-based micromechanical resonators. However with silicon resonators, scaling up to higher frequencies in the UHF range presents a well-recognized challenge in terms of reducing the motional impedance.The ultimate goal of this initiative is to implement low impedance, high Q silicon resonators. This is achieved by using PN-diode depletion layers embedded in the resonator to both drive and sense lateral vibrations. The objectives in this proposal are to fabricate, characterize, and model the devices.