Q-Factor Enhancement of Thin-Film Piezoelectric-on-Silicon MEMS Resonator by Phononic Crystal-Reflector Composite Structure

Thin-film piezoelectric-on-silicon (TPoS) microelectromechanical (MEMS) resonators are required to have high Q-factor to offer satisfactory results in their application areas, such as oscillator, filter, and sensors. This paper proposed a phononic crystal (PnC)-reflector composite structure to improve the Q factor of TPoS resonators. A one-dimensional phononic crystal is designed and deployed on the tether aiming to suppress the acoustic leakage loss as the acoustic wave with frequency in the range of the PnC is not able to propagate through it, and a reflector is fixed on the anchoring boundaries to reflect the acoustic wave that lefts from the effect of the PnC. Several 10 MHz TPoS resonators are fabricated and tested from which the Q-factor of the proposed 10 MHz TPoS resonator which has PnC-reflector composite structure on the tether and anchoring boundaries achieved offers a loaded Q-factor of 4682 which is about a threefold improvement compared to that of the conventional resonator which is about 1570.