Ultraclean wafer-level vacuum-encapsulated silicon ring resonators for timing and frequency references

Abstract. We present the design and development of breath-mode silicon ring resonators fabricated using a commercial pure-play microfabrication process that provides ultraclean wafer-level vacuum-encapsulation. The micromechanical resonators are fabricated in MEMS integrated design for inertial sensors process that is developed by Teledyne DALSA Semiconductor Inc. The ring resonators are designed to operate with a relatively low DC polarization voltage, starting at 5 V, while providing a high frequency-quality factor product. We study the quality of the vacuum packaging using an automated testing setup over an extended time period. We study the effect of motional resistance on the performance of MEMS resonators. The fabricated devices had a resonant frequency of 10 MHz with the quality factor exceeding 8.4×104.

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