Micromechanical resonators with sub-micron capacitive gaps in 2 μm process

Abstract

An innovative gap reduction technique is reported to achieve sub-micron capacitive gaps for micromechanical resonators to boost the output signal using the standard low-cost 2m commercially available foundry process from MEMSCAP. Electrostatic actuation was used to reduce the gap size below the fabrication limitation. To demonstrate the proposed idea, a 6.35MHz Lamé-mode square resonator was designed, fabricated and tested. The resonator gap size was experimentally measured to be 0.64m, which boosted the resonance peak by 20dB. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2007.