Electrothermally Actuated and Piezoelectrically Sensed Silicon Carbide Tunable MEMS Resonator

Abstract

In this letter, we present the design, fabrication, and electrical testing of a silicon carbide microelectromechanical (MEMS) resonant device with electrothermal actuation and piezoelectric sensing. A doubly clamped flexural-mode beam resonator made of cubic silicon carbide has been fabricated with a top platinum electrothermal actuator and a top lead zirconium titanate piezoelectric sensor. Electrothermal transduction has been used to drive the device into resonance and tune its frequency. Piezoelectric transduction has been used as resonance sensing technique. Electrical measurements have shown that, by increasing the dc bias of the actuating voltage from 1 to 7 V, a tuning range of 171 kHz can be achieved with a device resonating at 1.766 MHz.