Switching of transducer coupling in aluminum nitride contour-mode resonators provides an enabling technology for future tunable and reconfigurable filters for multi-function RF systems. By using microelectromechanical capacitive switches to realize the transducer electrode fingers, coupling between the metal electrode finger and the piezoelectric material is modulated to change the response of the device. On/off switched width extensional resonators with an area of <0.2 mm2 demonstrate a Q of 2000, K 2 of 0.72, and >24 dB switching ratio at a resonator center frequency of 635 MHz. Other device examples include a 63 MHz resonator with switchable impedance and a 470 MHz resonator with 127 kHz of fine center frequency tuning accomplished by mass loading of the resonator with the MEMS switches.
Inductive coupling and matching networks are used to increase the bandwidth of filters realized with aluminum nitride contour-mode resonators. Filter bandwidth has been doubled using a wirebonded combination of a wafer-level-packaged resonator chip and a high-Q integrated inductor chip. The three-pole filters have a center frequency near 500 MHz, an area of 9 mm × 9 mm, insertion loss of < 5 dB for a bandwidth of 0.4%, and a resonator unloaded Q of 1600.
This paper, the first of two parts, reports the design and fabrication of a fully integrated oven controlled microelectromechanical oscillator (OCMO). This paper begins by describing the limits on oscillator frequency stability imposed by the thermal drift and electronic properties (Q, resistance) of both the resonant tank circuit and feedback electronics required to form an electronic oscillator. An OCMO is presented that takes advantage of high thermal isolation and monolithic integration of both micromechanical resonators and electronic circuitry to thermally stabilize or ovenize all the components that comprise an oscillator. This was achieved by developing a processing technique where both silicon-on-insulator complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) circuitry and piezoelectric aluminum nitride, AlN, micromechanical resonators are placed on a suspended platform within a standard CMOS integrated circuit. Operation at microscale sizes achieves high thermal resistances (∼10 °C/mW), and hence thermal stabilization of the oscillators at very low-power levels when compared with the state-of-the-art ovenized crystal oscillators, OCXO. A constant resistance feedback circuit is presented that incorporates on platform resistive heaters and temperature sensors to both measure and stabilize the platform temperature. The limits on temperature stability of the OCMO platform and oscillator frequency imposed by the gain of the constant resistance feedback loop, placement of the heater and temperature sensing resistors, as well as platform radiative and convective heat losses are investigated. [2015-0035].
This paper, the second of two parts, reports the measurement and characterization of a fully integrated oven controlled microelectromechanical oscillator (OCMO). The OCMO takes advantage of high thermal isolation and monolithic integration of both aluminum nitride (AlN) micromechanical resonators and electronic circuitry to thermally stabilize or ovenize all the components that comprise an oscillator. Operation at microscale sizes allows implementation of high thermal resistance platform supports that enable thermal stabilization at very low-power levels when compared with the state-of-the-art oven controlled crystal oscillators. A prototype OCMO has been demonstrated with a measured temperature stability of -1.2 ppb/°C, over the commercial temperature range while using tens of milliwatts of supply power and with a volume of 2.3 mm3 (not including the printed circuit board-based thermal control loop). In addition, due to its small thermal time constant, the thermal compensation loop can maintain stability during fast thermal transients (>10 °C/min). This new technology has resulted in a new paradigm in terms of power, size, and warm up time for high thermal stability oscillators. [2015-0036].
Aluminum nitride (AlN) radio frequency (RF) MEMS filters utilize piezoelectric coupling for high-performance electrical filters with frequency diversity in a small form factor. Furthermore, the compatibility of AlN with CMOS fabrication makes AlN extremely attractive from a commercial standpoint. A technological hurdle has been the ability to package these suspended resonator devices at a wafer level with high yield. In this work, we describe wafer-level packaging (WLP) of AlN MEMS RF filters in an all silicon package with solder balls on nickel vanadium / gold (NiV/Au) bond pads that are subsequently ready for flip chip bonding. For this integration scheme, we utilize a 150 mm device wafer, fabricated in a CMOS foundry, and bond at the wafer level to a cavity silicon wafer, which hermetically encapsulates each device. The cavity wafer is then uniformly plasma etched back using a deep reactive ion etcher resulting in a 100 μm thick hermetic silicon lid encapsulating each die, balled with 250 μm 90/10 Pb/Sn solder balls and finally diced into individually packaged dies. Each die can be frequency-trimmed to an exact frequency by rapid temperature annealing the stress of the metallization layers of each resonator. The resulting technology yields a completely packaged wafer of 900 encapsulated die (14 mm2 by 800 μm thick) with multiple resonators and filters at various frequencies in each package.
Radio frequency microelectromechanical system (RF MEMS) devices are microscale devices that achieve superior performance relative to other technologies by taking advantage of the accuracy, precision, materials, and miniaturization available through microfabrication. To do this, these devices use their mechanical and electrical properties to perform a specific RF electrical function such as switching, transmission, or filtering. RF MEMS has been a popular area of research since the early 1990s, and within the last several years, the technology has matured sufficiently for commercialization and use in commercial market systems.
We have developed a MEMS based thin (<100 μm), temperature stable (< 1 parts-per-billion per degree Celsius (ppb/°C)), low power (<10 mW), frequency reference. Traditional high stability oscillators are based on quartz crystals. While a mature technology, the large size of quartz crystals presents important mission barriers including reducing oscillator thickness below 400 μm, and low power temperature stabilization (ovenizing). The small volume microresonators are 2 μm thick compared to 100’s of microns for quartz, and provide acoustic/thermal isolation when suspended above the substrate by narrow beams. This isolation enables a new paradigm for ovenizing oscillators at revolutionary low power levels <10 mW as compared to >300 mW for oven controlled quartz oscillators (OCXO). The oven controlled MEMS oscillator (OCMO) takes advantage of high thermal isolation and CMOS integration to ovenize the entire oscillator (AlN resonator and CMOS) on a suspended platform. This enables orders of magnitude reductions in size and power as compared with today's OCXO technology.
The goal of this project was to develop high frequency quality factor (fQ) product acoustic resonators matched to a standard RF impedance of 50 {Omega} using overmoded bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonators. These resonators are intended to serve as filters in a chip scale mechanical RF spectrum analyzer. Under this program different BAW resonator designs and materials were studied theoretically and experimentally. The effort resulted in a 3 GHz, 50 {Omega}, sapphire overmoded BAW with a fQ product of 8 x 10{sup 13}, among the highest values ever reported for an acoustic resonator.
In this work, we demonstrated engineered modification of propagation of thermal phonons, i.e. at THz frequencies, using phononic crystals. This work combined theoretical work at Sandia National Laboratories, the University of New Mexico, the University of Colorado Boulder, and Carnegie Mellon University; the MESA fabrication facilities at Sandia; and the microfabrication facilities at UNM to produce world-leading control of phonon propagation in silicon at frequencies up to 3 THz. These efforts culminated in a dramatic reduction in the thermal conductivity of silicon using phononic crystals by a factor of almost 30 as compared with the bulk value, and about 6 as compared with an unpatterned slab of the same thickness.