RF Channel-Select Micromechanical Disk Filters-Part II: Demonstration

This Part II of a two-paper sequence presents fabrication and measurement results for a micromechanical disk-based RF channel-select filter designed using the theory and procedure of Part I. Successful demonstration of an actual filter required several practical additions to an ideal design, including the introduction of a 39-nm-gap capacitive transducer, voltage-controlled frequency tuning electrodes, and a stress relieving coupled array design, all of which combine to enable a 0.1% bandwidth 223.4-MHz channel-select filter with only 2.7 dB of in-band insertion loss and 50-dB rejection of out-of-band interferers. This amount of rejection is more than 23 dB better than a previous capacitive-gap transduced filter design that did not benefit from sub-50-nm gaps. It also comes in tandem with a 20-dB shape factor of 2.7 realized by a hierarchical mechanical circuit design utilizing 206 micromechanical circuit elements, all contained in an area footprint of only [Formula: see text]. The key to such low insertion loss for this tiny percent bandwidth is Q 's >8800 supplied by polysilicon disk resonators employing for the first time capacitive transducer gaps small enough to generate coupling strengths of C_x/C_o  ∼  0.1 %, which is a 6.1× improvement over previous efforts. The filter structure utilizes electrical tuning to correct frequency mismatches due to process variations, where a dc tuning voltage of 12.1 V improves the filter insertion loss by 1.8 dB and yields the desired equiripple passband shape. Measured filter performance, both in- and out-of-channel, compares well with predictions of an electrical equivalent circuit that captures not only the ideal filter response, but also parasitic nonidealities that distort somewhat the filter response.