Biblio

This work reviews various methods which improve the effective coupling coefficient ( k2eff) of non-bulk acoustic wave (BAW) aluminum nitride (AlN) based RF MEMS resonators, mainly focusing on the innovative structural design of the resonators. k2eff is the key parameter for a resonator in communication applications because it measures the achievable fractional bandwidth of the filter constructed. The resonator's configuration, dimension, material stack and the fabrication process will all have impact on its k2eff. In this paper, the authors will review the efforts in improving the k2eff of piezoelectric MEMS resonators from research community in the past 15 years, mainly from the following three approaches: coupling lateral wave with vertical wave, exciting two-dimensional (2-D) lateral wave, as well as coupling 2-D lateral wave with vertical wave. The material will be limited to AlN family, which is proven to be manageable for manufacturing. The authors will also try to make recommendations to the effectiveness of various approaches and the path forward.

This paper is the first to investigate the long-term stability of Surface Acoustic Wave Gyroscopes (SAWG) using an ovenized control system. Monolithic integration of a MEMS heater adjacent to SAW devices on Lithium Niobate over insulator substrate (LNOI) tightly couples frequency-based temperature detection with heating for temperature and frequency stabilization. This first prototype demonstrates the ability to minimize the temperature variations of the SAWG to below ±10 μK and stabilize the SAWG resonance frequency to ±0.2 ppm. This approach thus eliminates the thermal drift in a SAWG and enables the development of a new generation of MEMS-based gyroscopes with long-term stability.