Boosted anchor quality factor of a thin-film aluminum nitride-on-silicon length extensional mode MEMS resonator using phononic crystal strip

This paper presents an anchor quality factor boosted thin-film Aluminum Nitride-On-Silicon length extensional mode microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) resonator supported by phononic crystal (PnC) strip-based tethers. The proposed PnC strip is a holed circle PnC strip. This proposed resonator is compared with the same resonator supported by two types of different tethers which are named one-quarter wavelength tether and circle PnC strip tether. Furthermore, the dependence of the bandgaps (BGs) of the proposed PnC strip on its geometrical dimensions is also investigated. The quality factor (Q) of the proposed resonator is compared with that of the resonator with other tether configurations. In addition, the impacts of the number of unit cell of the proposed PnC strip on the anchor quality factor (Qanchor\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$Q_{anchor}$$\end{document}) and Q are also evaluated in this work. The designed resonator operates at approximately 133 MHz and the BG covers this resonant frequency is 33.24 MHz. The simulation results show that the Qanchor\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$Q_{anchor}$$\end{document} and Q of the proposed resonator achieve higher than that for the counterparts. The average Qanchor\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$Q_{anchor}$$\end{document} and Q of the resonator with the proposed PnC strip are superior to 1.8884 x108%\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$10^8\%$$\end{document} and 54767.38%\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\%$$\end{document} over that with the circle PnC strip. These values are 4.3195 x107%\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$10^7\%$$\end{document} and 19902.5%\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\%$$\end{document} as compared to the one with quarter-wavelength tether. The finite element (FE) analysis in COMSOL Multiphysics is utilized for the PnC strips and resonator simulation scenarios. MATLAB and EXCEL are applied to calculate the post processing simulation results .