Platz, D., Stixenberger, M., Loch Gesing, A., Ignat, I., Kähler, H., & Schmid, U. (2023). Quality Factor Modulation in MEMS Resonators by Elastic Wave Interference in the Anchor Region. In Transducers 2023 : The 22nd International Conference on Solid-State Electronics, Actuators and Microsystems (pp. 1762–1765). IEEJ.
Anchor losses are one of the dominant dissipation mechanisms for MEMS resonators in vacuum. For slender
beam resonators, the underlying mechanism is modeled by approximating the anchor region as a single point source of
elastic waves. Here, we discuss that this approximation is not valid for plate resonators where the anchor region
effectively becomes a line distribution of point sources. We use finite element simulations to show that the flux of
mechanical energy in the substrate strongly depends on the mode in which the resonators vibrates. We utilize this
effect to modulate the anchor loss quality factor in simulations and experiments over two orders of magnitude
by changing the resonator’s width.
