Thermal and mechanical simulation of bulk resonators

In this work, a mechanical silicon resonator fabricated on Silicon On Insulator (SOI) substrates, is simulated using ANSYS. Two different models are used depending on the objectives of the simulation. A 2D model is used for simulating the resonance frequency and the surface temperature distribution, as long as a 3-D model is necessary for more accurate thermal and stress-distribution analysis. Simple structures as cantilevers have been fabricated with different dimensions and preliminary results of the modal behaviour have been performed. As an example, fundamental modes around 3 kHz to 99 kHz and quality factors around 63 up to 1200 have been measured on structures of 1000×1000 μm² and 300×300 μm².