Fabrication of electrostatic resonators with monocrystalline 3C-SiC grown on silicon

Abstract

The development of high quality 3C-SiC layers on Si free of residual stress opens the possibility to use SiC for microsystems fabrication and to combine them with Si devices for sensor applications. A new front-side micromachining process technology for 3C-SiC layers on Si resonators has been developed. To show it feasibility several resonator cantilever or bridge test structures of various dimensions have been fabricated. The main advantage of SiC in comparison with Si lies on its higher Young's modulus (almost three times higher), which results in higher resonance frequencies and higher quality factors