Modeling of Nonlinear Dynamics and Temperature Stability of Doped Silicon Microresonators

Silicon is widely used as the device material for many micro resonators applied in timing and frequency referencing. One key disadvantage of silicon resonators compared to quartz resonators is their high thermal sensitivities. Doping silicon is a promising approach for temperature stability. Doped resonators operating at large deformation and finite strain amplitude often go to nonlinear regimes; therefore, nonlinear dynamics must be considered for adequately predicting the system behavior. In this article, the nonlinear vibration analysis is given for rectangular resonators operating in the Lamé mode, incorporating both the second- and third-order elastic constant (SOEC and TOEC) components. This article presents an analytic demonstration for the linear and nonlinear lumped mass system equivalent spring constants explicitly in terms of SOEC and TOEC. We show that, for a rectangular resonator in the Lamé mode, the first-order nonlinear spring constant would be an explicit expression in terms of TOEC components, which, for a square resonator, will be nullified. We show that there exist optimal doping levels where the anharmonic stiffness coefficient is minimized, implying the most dynamic stable vibrations. Furthermore, this article shows that there exists a tradeoff between dynamical and temperature–frequency stability in terms of the doping level.