Integration of RF-MEMS resonators on submicrometric commercial CMOS technologies

Abstract

Integration of electrostatically driven and capacitively transduced MEMS resonators in commercial CMOS technologies is discussed. A figure of merit to study the performance of different structural layers and different technologies is defined. High frequency (HF) and very high frequency (VHF) resonance MEMS metal resonators are fabricated on a deep submicron 0.18 μm commercial CMOS technology and are characterized using electrical tests without amplification, demonstrating the applicability of the MEMS fabrication process for future technologies. Moreover, the fabricated devices show comparable performance in terms of Q × f res with previously presented MEMS resonators, whereas the small gap allows obtaining a low motional resistance with a single resonator approach.

Room-temperature sub-band gap optoelectronic response of hyperdoped silicon

“…Previous attempts to extend the photoresponse of silicon-based devices into the short-wavelength infrared regime (l ¼ 1,400-3,000 nm) at room temperature focused on forming heterostructures with SiGe alloys [6][7][8] or microstructures of thermally absorbing material 9,10 , and modifying the intrinsic band structure via intentional introduction of defects [11][12][13][14][15][16][17] . Growing microstructures of foreign materials on top of silicon results in processing complexities that can compromise CMOS compatibility 18,19 . Furthermore, integration of thermally absorbing materials can be effective for short-wavelength infrared response but results in slow pixel response times intrinsically limited by the thermal time constant, which hinders applications in array-based real-time imaging systems at room temperature 10 .…”

Effects of slots on thermoelastic quality factor of a vertical beam MEMS resonator

“…However developing a MEMS resonator with high quality factor in MHz frequency ranges, which would be compatible with CMOS integrated circuits (Dragoi et al 2012) is very important in view of different applications. In integrated circuits, applications such as filters (Bannon et al 2000;Lopez et al 2009), timing and reference frequency devices (Lin et al 2004;Nguyen 2007), microprocessors (Abdelsalam et al 2010) and sensors such as pressure and humidity sensors (Shi et al 2013;Muniraj 2011) facing an important challenge either from scientific or engineering viewpoint that must be well addressed. As an important property, Quality factor (Q) is a scaled ratio between stored energy and damped energy per cycle, which is associated with frequency.…”

Resonant body transistors in standard CMOS technology

“…MEMS-first devices are typically designed in the front-end-of-line (FEOL) stack with access to high performance materials such as Silicon and high-k dielectrics with a high thermal budget. However, these MEMS devices require a release etch at the end of the CMOS process which can affect the performance and yield of the surrounding circuitry while increasing overall process complexity [9,10].…”