Piezoelectric MEMS Resonators for Frequency Control and Sensing

Speaker: Dr. Joshua Lee (City University of Hong Kong)

This seminar will first highlight some advances towards low impedance and high-quality factor (Q) resonators for frequency control, delivering Qs above 10,000 and impedances below 50 Ohms in the upper VHF range. These high-performance resonators have been used to realize low phase noise oscillators. The rest of the talk will illustrate how the advantages of AlN technology might be exploited to realize resonant sensors targeting operation in ambient conditions and dissipative media (as opposed to vacuum, such is commonly the case in state-of-art capacitive resonators). Three examples will be described. These include (1) resonant sensing platforms operable in liquids for biosensing applications, (2) MEMS magnetic sensors targeting electronic compass applications for next-generation integrated inertial measurement units without the constraint of requiring vacuum packaging, and (3) air-coupled micromachined ultrasonic transducers for touchless sensing applications.