Highly reconfigurable Aluminum Nitride MEMS resonator using 12 monolithically integrated phase change material switches

Abstract

This paper presents the first demonstration of a frequency reconfigurable and programmable Aluminum Nitride (AlN) piezoelectric MEMS resonator using phase change material (PCM) based switchable electrodes. For the first time, 12 miniaturized (2 μm×2 μm) PCM switches are monolithically integrated with an AlN MEMS resonator and used to reconfigure the terminal connections of the individual metal fingers composing the device interdigital transducer (IDT). This innovative design solution provides high ON/OFF ratio switching of the acoustic resonance (~28X impedance variation at resonance), and reconfiguration of the device electromechanical coupling (kt2: 0-1.32%), capacitance (C: 125-1,134 fF), and operating frequency (f1~181.3 MHz, f2~385.4 MHz).