Mechanical Coupling of 2D Resonator Arrays for MEMS Filter Applications

This paper presents a study of mechanical coupling in 2D resonator arrays for filter applications. A robust coupling design for 2D array filters, comprised of weak coupling in one dimension and strong coupling in the second, is demonstrated experimentally and compared with weakly coupled and electrically summed 2D resonator array filters. Effects of inherent disorder in resonator arrays due to fabrication variations are minimized in this mechanical coupling scheme, averaging over resonator mismatch to form a smooth pass-band. The strongly-coupled 2D filter improves insertion loss and ripple without degradation in filter shape factor or stop-band rejection relative to its ID counterpart.