Temperature Dependence of Quality Factor in MEMS Resonators

Abstract

The temperature dependence of the quality factor, Q, of encapsulated MEMS resonators is analyzed in an effort to understand the temperature regimes where different energy loss mechanisms are dominant. The effect of two limiting energy loss mechanisms for these resonators, air damping and thermo elastic dissipation, are separately analyzed to determine the Q of the system over a range of temperatures. MEMS resonators can be designed to have either strong weak dependence of Q on temperature, if the effects of the dominant loss mechanisms with temperature are well understood. Up to 1% change in quality factor per °C change of temperature was demonstrated, leading to the possibility of using quality factor as an absolute thermometer for temperature compensation in MEMS resonators.

Detection of phase transition in polyethylene glycol using a multimodal micromechanical acoustic resonator

“…This negative shift resembles characteristic thermo-elastic dissipation (TED) related losses in acoustic resonators. 4,28 Since, we are more focused on abrupt and large changes in the Q values which might be caused due to the phase transition, we did not further pursue modelling TED and other loss mechanisms for our resonators. In the case of M2, the rate of quality factor shift increases around 310 K, dropping from $1200 (309 K) to $10 to 20 (314 K-315 K).…”

“…3,4 The resonant frequency modulation is used as the primary readout in gravimetric sensing applications where the resonant frequency is correlated to effective mass m and effective stiffness k of an acoustic resonator by the following expression:…”

A phononic crystal strip based on silicon for support tether applications in silicon-based MEMS resonators and effects of temperature and dopant on its band gap characteristics

“…However, the dopant and temperature change leading to the decrease of quality factor have been reported by many authors. 35,36 In this section, we only focus on the PnC strip as support tethers for reducing support loss in the MEMS resonators. Thus, we first investigate the impact of temperature and dopant on the frequency drift of the MEMS resonators and band gap properties of the PnC strip so that we can find the change relation between the resonant frequency of the MEMS resonators and the band gap characteristics of the PnC strip.…”

Effect of air damping on quality factor of bulk mode microresonators

“…The dynamic performances of the microresonators are strongly affected by several energy dissipation mechanisms [3,4]. The quality factor (Q) is a measure of energy loss in a resonator, which is defined as the ratio between the total system energy (E) and the average energy loss in one radian (DE) at resonant frequency.…”