Design and modelling of integrated RF MEMS beam resonators

Abstract

Recently, there has been interest to design the MicroElectroMechanical System (MEMS) integrated with Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) resonator for RF integrated circuits. This work presents the analytical, simulation and measurement of clamped-clamped and clamped-free beam resonators. These resonators will be fabricated using commercial CMOS technology and are intended to replace current off-chip resonators. These resonators furnish on-chip low cost solutions for devices with much reduced chip area, besides having considerably reduced insertion losses due to external bond wires. They can be integrated with amplifiers to form oscillators for generating clocks in the 20MHz range. The resonators require approximately 30V DC and 0.2V AC to electro-statically actuate the resonator's beams. The actuation is simulated and measured using Finite modeling software of COMSOL™ and CADENCE™ device simulation of Cadence to obtain optimum design parameters. This paper makes a comparative review of different models for evaluating the designed resonator's performance in terms of resonance frequency, S21-parameters, resonator's equivalent circuit parameters, Qfactor, pull-in voltage, insertion loss and beam's displacement.