Differentially piezoresistive transduction of high-q encapsulated SOI-MEMS resonators with sub-100 nm gaps

A differentially piezoresistive (piezo-R) readout proposed for single-crystal-silicon (SCS) microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) resonators is implemented in a foundry-based resonator platform, demonstrating effective feedthrough cancellation using just simple piezoresistors from the resonator supports while maximizing their capacitively transduced driving areas. The SCS resonators are fabricated by a CMOS foundry using an SOI-MEMS technology together with a polysilicon refill process. A high electromechanical coupling coefficient is attained by the use of 50-nm transducer gap spacing. Moreover, a vacuum package of the fabricated resonators is carried out through wafer-level bonding process. In this work, the corner supporting beams of the resonator serve not only mechanical supports but also piezoresistors for detecting the motional signal, hence substantially simplifying the overall resonator design to realize the piezo-R sensing. In addition, the fabricated resonators are capable of either capacitive sensing or piezo-R detection under the same capacitive drive. To mitigate feedthrough signals from parasitics, a differential measurement configuration of the piezo-R transduction is implemented in this work, featuring more than 30-dB improvement on the feedthrough level as compared with the single-ended piezo-R counterpart and purely capacitive sensing readout. Furthermore, the high-Q design of the mechanical supports is also investigated, offering Q more than 10 000 with efficient piezo-R transduction for MEMS resonators.