Material dependent thermoelastic damping limited quality factor analysis of disc resonators

MEMS Disc resonators have emerged as a leading choice for RF communication systems upto UHF range. Inorder to evaluate the performance of a MEMS resonator it is important to understand the physical loss mechanisms, which limit the quality factor. In this paper, an important energy loss mechanism — ThermoElastic Damping (TED) effect in disc resonators is analyzed by evaluating the TED limited Quality factor. The Qfactor analysis results indicate a possible way to reach high quality factor by proper selection of the material of the disc structure. Simulations show the great importance of the material choice in order to reduce thermoelastic losses so that better Qfactors can be achieved at UHF range. These results represent an important step towards reaching the frequencies required by the RF front-ends in wireless transceivers. Finite element method is used to get an estimation for the thermoelastic losses and commercial FEM tool COMSOL is used for simulations.