Square wine glass mode resonator with quality factor of 4 million

We report on the experimental characterization of a single crystal silicon square-plate microresonator. The resonator is excited in the square wine glass (SWG) mode at a mechanical resonance frequency of 2.065 MHz. The resonator displays quality factor of 9660 in air and an ultra-high quality factor of Q = 4.05 × 10⁶ in 12 mtorr vacuum. The SWG mode may be described as a square plate that contracts along one axis in the fabrication plane, while simultaneously extending along an orthogonal axis in the same plane. The resonant structure is addressed in a 2-terminal configuration by utilizing equal and opposite drive polarities on surrounding capacitor electrodes, thereby decreasing the motional resistance of the resonator. The resonant micromechanical device has been fabricated in a commercial silicon-on-insulator process through the MEMSCAP foundry utilising a minimum electrostatic gap of 2 μm. © 2008 IEEE.