Laterally Vibrating Lithium Niobate MEMS Resonators with High Electromechanical Coupling and Quality Factor

This paper reports on a new type of laterally vibrating micro-resonators (LVRs) enabled by ion sliced X-cut Lithium Niobate thin film and micro-machining. In operation, the device is excited into lateral vibrations, thus allowing the center frequency to be determined by the lithography-defined dimensions of the electrodes. This configuration enables monolithic multi-frequency solutions for future wireless communication. The designed devices have shown a high electromechanical coupling (k(t)(2)) of 11% - the highest demonstrated for MEMS LVRs. Device orientation was also varied to investigate its impact on k(t)(2) and experimental data has shown good agreement with theoretical predictions. The Quality factor of these devices has also shown a dependence on the orientation, ranging from 350 to 1100.