Suspended Frame Structure with Phononic Crystals for Anchor Loss Reduction of MEMS Resonator

In order for micro/nano-electro-mechanical systems (M/NEMS) resonators to make real impact to practical applications such as wireless communications and autonomous sensor networks, further improvements are needed in particular in the enhancement of quality factor
$(Q)$
. Herein, a novel geometry design with a suspended frame structure integrated with phononic crystals (PnC) unit cells was demonstrated to significantly reduce the anchor loss of ring-shaped thin-film piezoelectric-on-silicon bulk acoustic wave resonator and then enhance its
$Q$
. Finite-element-analysis (FEA) simulation was employed to systematically study the proposed design, which reveals that the
$Q_{anc}$
of this novel geometry (i.e., R6T20FP-w5 with
$Q_{anc}$
of 100000) achieved a maximum 83-fold enhancement compared with the pristine one (i.e., RNT10-w26 with
$Q_{anc}$
is 1200).