Highs-Q Selective Filters Using Mechanical Resonance of Silicon
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. CAS-25, NO. 4, APRIL 1918 215 Highs-Q Selective Filters Using Mechanical Resonance of Silicon. Beams MARIJA F. HRIBSEK AND ROBERT W. NEWCOMB Absrmcr-Tlw theory of integrated high-Q selective filters based on the mechanical resonance of single silicon beams is presented. l%e method for transfer function calcoMion is developed, and it is shown that tbe silicon “i beam filters have high-Q selective clmrackristics. A coostruction prow dare based on anisotropic etching of silicon and classical integrated technology is proposed.. (4 I. INTRODUCTION x=0 N THE last two decades considerable effort has been [1101 x I made to solve the problem of high-Q selective circuits. r-l% A wide variety of different approaches to the solution of I this problem exists. They can be divided into two main W categories, those for low frequencies (< 10 kHz) and those +I To] for high frequencies (> 10 kHz). For high frequencies up to 10 MHz and high-Q factors the problem is solved by using quartz and1 ceramic piezoelectric resonators [l]. Quartz filters are very well known as precision tuning Fig. 1. Single silicon beam device. elements in the fr’equency range from 10“ to lo7 Hz with Q factors between 50 and 1000 [2]. The main disadvan- is determined by their dimensions and physical properties. tage of these filters is their high cost and relative fragility. Some of these electromechanical filters are bulky and Ceramic filters, which have been developed in recent nonintegrable [5], but one of them, the resonant gate years, can have central frequencies up to 7 MHz and Q transistor [6], [7] is compatible with integrated circuit factors up to 300 [3]. However, for low frequencies, where technology. The resonant element in the resonant gate crystal filters are impractical, the problems still exist. transistor is a gold beam positioned over an MOS transis- There are many proposed solutions with active integrated tor. In this paper a new integrable electromechanical filter circuits (IC) [l], 1141,but there is no complete solution. is developed in which the resonator is a cantilevered Some of the proposed circuits can have high Q but their silicon beam etched from the silicon “substrate” [8]. The sensitivity to the circuit elements is too high making them idea is illustrated in Fig. 1. The electrostatic force pro- impractical. As a ,matter of fact in most proposed config- duced by an input signal oi will cause vibrations of the urations the sensitivity of the Q factor is proportional to’ silicon beam. The vibrations are sensedby the piezoresis- the Q factor itself. Where this is not the case, some of the tive bridge placed at the foot of the beam. The output proposed circuits have another drawback, which makes signal of the bridge is appreciable only at the resonant them inconvenient. for integration when high Q is desired: frequency of the beam, as is shown in Section II. The the ratio of the maximum to the minimum value of many derivation of the transfer function and discussion on the elements is proportional to the Q factor [4]. Therefore, it expected values of Q are also presented. can be concluded that it is hard to obtain entirely integra- In Section III a possible construction procedure of the ble filters with a Q factor greater than 50 for low silicon beam filters is discussed. frequencies. This has suggested the use of mechanical resonators [3]. The resonant frequency of these resonators II. TRANSFER FUNCTION OF A SINGLE SILICON BEAM FILTER Manuscript received August 17, 1977; revised December 15, 1977. The basic structure of silicon beam devices has been This paper in part represents work of M. HribHek’s Ph.D. dissertation shown in Fig. 1 It consists of a thin silicon beam (T= for the Department of Electrical Engineering, Universit of Maryland, College Park, and was supported in part by a Fulbri t Hays Travel lo-15 pm) cantilevered over a metal plate. On the top side Grant and by the National Science Foundation un i er Grant ENG of the beam at its free end an aluminium film is deposited 7543221. M. F. Hribbek is with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University while at its fixed end four equal resistors are formed into a of Belgrade, Bulevar Revolucije 73, P.O. Box 816,11OOl,Belgrade, Yugos- bridge. The resistors can be placed either completely or lavia. partially on the beam as shown in Fig. 2(a) and (b). Two R. W. Newcomb is with the Electrical Engineering Department, Uni- versity of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. of the resistors are in the direction parallel to the length of 216 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS ANIl SYSTEMS, VOL. CA+25, NO. 4, APRIL 1978 transducer. We will find separately these three terms, thus giving T(s). As mentioned above, the input transducer of our silicon cl beam device is of electrostatic type. It is well known [9, .P pp. 63-661 that the voltage applied between two metal (4 plates separated by a dielectric will produce an electro- static force given by where 0 is the applied voltage, A is the area of the plates, a is the distance between the plates, and l is the permitiv- ity of the dielectric. In the case of silicon beam devices the dielectric will normally be air, so that the permittivity will be e. = 8.85 x lo-i2 F/m. If the voltage u is given by (c., Fig. 2. Piemresistive bridge positioning and connection. v=E,+F/icoswt (4) and E,> Vi the signal component of the force will be the beam and the other two are perpendicular to it as AEoro suggestedby Professor V. Vaganov [8]. The resistors are Fcoswt=- 2 v; cos wt connected to form a simple piezoresistive bridge, shown in Fig. 2(c). The bridge, which represents the output trans- or ducer of the device, is in balance when the beam does not F AEo6 vibrate. If the beam vibrates, the resistances, due to the -= piezoresistive properties of silicon, will change differently, vi a2 and an output voltage will occur. The vibrations of the which represents the last term in (2). beam can be caused by mechanical disturbance (e.g. The middle term in (2) is derived by finding the reso- sound) or an electrostatic force produced by a variable nant frequencies and equations of motion of a silicon voltage applied between the two metal plates. In both beam resonator. The derivation, presented in the Appen- cases the deflection of the beam, and consequently the dix, is based on the well-known theory of vibrating beams output voltage of the bridge, will be maximal’ when the [lo, ch. 41. It is shown that the fundamental resonant frequency of the signal is equal to the mechanical reso- frequency is determined by geometric dimensions and nant frequency of the beam. At all other frequencies the physical properties of the material of which the beam is output voltage will be much smaller. To be able to prove made and is given by this, we will find the transfer function of the device. fi =0.16165 (E/~)‘/~T/L~ Considering only the case where the excitation is an input (6) voltage, as shown in Fig. l., the transfer function is where T is the thickness, and L is the length of the beam, defined as p is the density, and E is the Young modulus. The middle term of (2) is shown to be T(s) = ; 0, dxB) I -=- where V, is the output voltage of the bridge, and Vi is the F F applied input voltage. Since it is difficult to find the - 3SET transfer function directly we will expressit as a product of = (s2+w~+(l/Q)u&NT(L-L,)L2r& three terms, each term corresponding to one of the three parts of the device. The first part of the device is the input transducer which converts the input voltage into mechani- cal force. The second part is the vibrating beam, and the third part is the bridge which converts the mechanical vibration into the output voltage. Since the bridge is a stress sensing device we will express T(s) in the following where X, is the coordinate of the center of the bridge (see form: Fig. l(b)), p, is the coefficient given by (A-4) and C(x) is v. uB F given by T(s)=;=~~~ (2) I I C (x) = 0.707(cash ?T&f + cos @, 2) where a, is the stress which acts on the bridge, and F is the force caused by the input voltage Vi. The first term in -0.518 (sinh +,? +sin r/3,:). (8) (2) represents the transfer function of the bridge, the second term is the transfer function of the vibrating beam, From (8) we can see that C(X) is maximal for x =0 and and the third term is the transfer function of the input zero for x = L. This means that uB/F for the output will HRlBiEK AND NEWCOMB: HIGH-Q SELECTIVE FILTERS ‘217 be greatest if the output bridge is positioned close to x = 0. 100 The output transducer used for the silicon beam device is a piezoresistive bridge placed on the top side of the beam as shown in IFigs. 1 and 2. It converts the vibrations of the beam into an electric signal through the unbalanc- ing action of a vibration on the differently placed arms. As was mentioned before, the output voltage should be zero when the bealm does not vibrate.