Experimental observation of temperature and pressure induced frequency fluctuations in silicon MEMS resonators

Abstract

Silicon MEMS resonators are increasingly being adopted for applications in timing and frequency control, as well as precision sensing. It is well established that a key limitation to performance is associated with sensitivity to environmental variables such as temperature and pressure. As a result, technical approaches to address these factors such as vacuum sealing and ovenization of the resonators in a temperature controlled system have been introduced. However, residual sensitivity to such effects can still serve as a significant source of frequency fluctuations and drift in precision devices. This is experimentally demonstrated in this paper for a precision oven-controlled and vacuum-sealed silicon resonators. The frequency fluctuations of oscillators constructed using two separate nearly-identical co-located resonators on the same chip are analysed and differential frequency fluctuations are examined as a means of reducing the impact of common-mode effects such as temperature and pressure. For this configuration, our results show that the mismatch of temperature and pressure coefficients between the resonators ultimately limits the frequency stability.