Microresonators: the quality factor

Microresonators are offering increasingly impressive “quality factors.” In other words, the duration of the vibration induced by an initial impulse is getting longer and longer. This sounds like good news for the applications in which the components will be used—and it is! However, this improved performance is creating a challenge for researchers at Leti. With the usual techniques, characterizing a single microresonator can take up to two hours. To solve the problem, the researchers have developed a new method. The resonator is exposed to an electrical impulse with a particular shape and within a carefully-chosen and limited frequency range. This prevents the resonance signal from being drowned out by a parasite signal due to the structure of the sensors. The resulting measurement is more reliable than before, takes just 30 seconds per component, and can be automated at wafer level. The method has been validated on several R&D projects.

Contact: antoine.nowodzinski@cea.fr

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