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This paper reports on the fabrication and characterization of high-quality factor (Q) single crystal silicon (SCS) in-plane capacitive beam resonators with sub-100 nm to submicron transduction gaps using the HARPSS process. The resonating element is made of single crystal silicon while the drive and sense electrodes are made of trench-refilled polysilicon, yielding an allsilicon capacitive microresonator. The fabricated SCS resonators are 20-40 m thick and have self-aligned capacitive gaps. Vertical gaps as small as 80 nm in between 20 m thick silicon structures have been demonstrated in this work. A large number of clamped-free and clamped-clamped beam resonators were fabricated. Quality factors as high as 177 000 for a 19 kHz clamped-free beam and 74 000 for an 80 kHz clamped-clamped beam were measured under 1 mtorr vacuum. Clamped-clamped beam resonators were operated at their higher resonance modes (up to the fifth mode); a resonance frequency of 12 MHz was observed for the fifth mode of a clamped-clamped beam with the fundamental mode frequency of 0.91 MHz. Electrostatic tuning characteristics of the resonators have been measured and compared to the theoretical values. The measured Q values of the clamped-clamped beam resonators are within 20% of the fundamental thermoelastic damping limits () obtained from finite element analysis. [950]

This paper studies the application of lateral bulk acoustic thin-film piezoelectric-on-substrate (TPoS) resonators in high-frequency reference oscillators. Low-motional-impedance TPoS resonators are designed and fabricated in 2 classes--high-order and coupled-array. Devices of each class are used to assemble reference oscillators and the performance characteristics of the oscillators are measured and discussed. Since the motional impedance of these devices is small, the transimpedance amplifier (TIA) in the oscillator loop can be reduced to a single transistor and 3 resistors, a format that is very power-efficient. The lowest reported power consumption is approximately 350 microW for an oscillator operating at approximately 106 MHz. A passive temperature compensation method is also utilized by including the buried oxide layer of the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate in the structural resonant body of the device, and a very small (-2.4 ppm/ degrees C) temperature coefficient of frequency is obtained for an 82-MHz oscillator.

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