The resonator is a mechanical mass-spring-damper system consisting of a central shuttle mass that is suspended by two folded-beam flexures. The resonator is driven in the preferred (vertical) direction by electrostatic comb actuators. The suspension is designed to be compliant in the preferred direction and to be stiff in the remaining directions to keep the fingers of the comb drive aligned.

The microresonator is described by the comb-drive voltage and sixteen structural parameters of the shuttle mass folded flexure and comb drive elements as shown in the figures left. The resonator synthesis module will determine the best set of these parameters to meet the design specifications that you enter.

The resonator synthesis module is the first in a series of synthesis modules to overcome the lack of MEMS Cell Libraries. It incorporates the rapid layout synthesis of a microresonator from high-level functional specifications such as resonant frequency, quality factor, and displacement amplitude, for a user-specified design objective. Therefore, it generates MEMS cells on the fly to meet the system-level designer’s requirements.

Our approach is a two-step approach: first to design the microresonator, and second to use parameteric module layout software like CaMEL to translate the design into masks.