Experimental Observation of Temperature and Pressure Induced Frequency Fluctuations in Silicon MEMS Resonators

TY - JOUR

T1 - Experimental Observation of Temperature and Pressure Induced Frequency Fluctuations in Silicon MEMS Resonators

AU - Pandit, Milind

AU - Mustafazade, Arif

AU - Sobreviela, Guillermo

AU - Zhao, Chun

AU - Zou, Xudong

AU - Seshia, Ashwin A.

N1 - Funding Information: Manuscript received December 24, 2020; revised April 6, 2021; accepted April 19, 2021. Date of publication May 21, 2021; date of current version July 30, 2021. This work was supported in part by the Natural Environment Research Council under Grant NE/N012097/1 and in part by the Innovate U.K. Subject Editor C. Nguyen. (Corresponding author: Ashwin A. Seshia.) Milind Pandit and Guillermo Sobreviela are with the Nanoscience Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FF, U.K., and also with Silicon Microgravity Ltd., Cambridge CB25 9GL, U.K. Publisher Copyright: © 1992-2012 IEEE.

PY - 2021/5/21

Y1 - 2021/5/21

N2 - Silicon MEMS resonators are increasingly being adopted for applications in timing and frequency control, as well as precision sensing. It is well established that a key limitation to performance is associated with sensitivity to environmental variables such as temperature and pressure. As a result, technical approaches to address these factors such as vacuum sealing and ovenization of the resonators in a temperature controlled system have been introduced. However, residual sensitivity to such effects can still serve as a significant source of frequency fluctuations and drift in precision devices. This is experimentally demonstrated in this paper for a precision oven-controlled and vacuum-sealed silicon resonators. The frequency fluctuations of oscillators constructed using two separate nearly-identical co-located resonators on the same chip are analysed and differential frequency fluctuations are examined as a means of reducing the impact of common-mode effects such as temperature and pressure. For this configuration, our results show that the mismatch of temperature and pressure coefficients between the resonators ultimately limits the frequency stability. [2020-0395]

AB - Silicon MEMS resonators are increasingly being adopted for applications in timing and frequency control, as well as precision sensing. It is well established that a key limitation to performance is associated with sensitivity to environmental variables such as temperature and pressure. As a result, technical approaches to address these factors such as vacuum sealing and ovenization of the resonators in a temperature controlled system have been introduced. However, residual sensitivity to such effects can still serve as a significant source of frequency fluctuations and drift in precision devices. This is experimentally demonstrated in this paper for a precision oven-controlled and vacuum-sealed silicon resonators. The frequency fluctuations of oscillators constructed using two separate nearly-identical co-located resonators on the same chip are analysed and differential frequency fluctuations are examined as a means of reducing the impact of common-mode effects such as temperature and pressure. For this configuration, our results show that the mismatch of temperature and pressure coefficients between the resonators ultimately limits the frequency stability. [2020-0395]

KW - noise processes

KW - pressure dependence

KW - resonators

KW - Silicon MEMS

KW - temperature dependence

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107193670&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1109/JMEMS.2021.3077633

DO - 10.1109/JMEMS.2021.3077633

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85107193670

SN - 1057-7157

VL - 30

SP - 500

EP - 505

JO - Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems

JF - Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems

IS - 4

M1 - 9439061

ER -