Publications

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Periodic porous structures offer unique material solutions to thermoelectric applications. With recent interest in phonon band gap engineering, these periodic structures can result in reduction of the phonon thermal conductivity due to coherent destruction of phonon modes characteristic in phononic crystals. In this paper, we numerically study phonon transport in periodic porous silicon phononic crystal structures. We develop a model for the thermal conductivity of phononic crystal that accounts for both coherent and incoherent phonon effects, and show that the phonon thermal conductivity is reduced to less than 4% of the bulk value for Si at room temperature. This has substantial impact on thermoelectric applications, where the efficiency of thermoelectric materials is inversely proportional to the thermal conductivity. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.

Phononic crystals (PnCs) are acoustic devices composed of a periodic arrangement of scattering centers embedded in a homogeneous background matrix with a lattice spacing on the order of the acoustic wavelength. When properly designed, a superposition of Bragg and Mie resonant scattering in the crystal results in the opening of a frequency gap over which there can be no propagation of elastic waves in the crystal, regardless of direction. In a fashion reminiscent of photonic lattices, PnC patterning results in a controllable redistribution of the phononic density of states. This property makes PnCs a particularly attractive platform for manipulating phonon propagation. In this communication, we discuss the profound physical implications this has on the creation of novel thermal phenomena, including the alteration of the heat capacity and thermal conductivity of materials, resulting in high-ZT materials and highly-efficient thermoelectric cooling and energy harvesting. © 2011 SPIE.

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This work demonstrates a lateral overtone bulk acoustic resonator (LOBAR), which consists of an aluminum nitride (AlN) transducer coupled to a suspended thin silicon carbide (SiC) film fabricated using standard CMOS-compatible processes. The LOBAR design allows for high transduction efficiency and quality factors, by decoupling the transduction and energy storage schemes in the resonator. The frequency and bandwidth of the resonator were lithographically defined and controlled. A LOBAR operating at 2.93GHz with a Q greater than 100,000 in air was fabricated and characterized, having the highest reported f×Q product of any acoustic resonator to date.

This paper demonstrates silicon carbide phononic crystal cavities for RF and microwave micromechanical resonators. We demonstrate design, fabrication, and characterization of Silicon Carbide/air phononic crystals used as Bragg acoustic mirrors to confine energy in a lateral SiC cavity. Aluminum nitride transducers drive and sense SiC overtone cavities in the 2-3GHz range with fxQ products exceeding 3×1013 in air. This approach enables decoupling of the piezoelectric AlN material from the SiC cavity, resulting in high Q resonators at microwave frequencies. The SiC cavities are fabricated in a CMOS-compatible process, enabling integration with wirelesss communication systems.

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Recently reported narrow bandwidth, <;2%, aluminum nitride microresonator filters in the 100-500 MHz range offer lower insertion loss, 100x smaller size, and elimination of large external matching networks, when compared to similar surface acoustic wave filters. While the initial results are promising, many microresonators exhibit spurious responses both close and far from the pass band which degrade the out of band rejection and prevent the synthesis of useful filters. This paper identifies the origins of several unwanted modes in overtone width extensional aluminum nitride microresonators and presents techniques for mitigating the spurious responses.

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A two-dimensional phononic crystal (PnC) that can operate in the GHz range is created in a freestanding silicon substrate using NanoFIBrication (using a focused ion beam (FIB) to fabricate nanostructures). First, a simple cubic 6.75 x 6.75 ?m array of vias with 150 nm spacing is generated. After patterning the vias, they are backfilled with void-free tungsten scatterers. Each via has a diameter of 48 nm. Numerical calculations predict this 2D PnC will generate a band gap near 22 GHz. A protective layer of chromium on top of the thin (100 nm) silicon membrane confines the surface damage to the chromium, which can be removed at a later time. Inspection of the underside of the membrane shows the vias flaring out at the exit, which we are dubbing the 'trumpet effect'. The trumpet effect is explained by modeling the lateral damage in a freestanding membrane.

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An AlN MEMS resonator technology has been developed, enabling massively parallel filter arrays on a single chip. Low-loss filter banks covering the 10 MHz--10-GHz frequency range have been demonstrated, as has monolithic integration with inductors and CMOS circuitry. The high level of integration enables miniature multi-bandm spectrally aware, and cognitive radios.

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In this work we describe a new parallel lattice (PL) filter topology for electrically coupled AlN microresonator based filters. While 4th order, narrow percent bandwidth (0.03%) parallel filters based on high impedance (11 kΩ) resonators have been previously demonstrated at 20 MHz [1], in this work we realize low insertion loss PL filters at 400-500 MHz with termination impedances from 50 to 150 Ω and much wider percent bandwidths, up to 5.3%. Obtaining high percent bandwidth is a major challenge in microresonator based filters given the relatively low piezoelectric coupling coefficients, kt2, when compared to bulk (BAW) and surface (SAW) acoustic wave filter materials.

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In order to observe and quantify pressure levels generated during testing of energetic materials, a sensor array with high temporal resolution (∼1 ns) and extremely high pressure range (> 1 GPa) is needed. We have developed such a sensor array which utilizes a novel integrated high performance CMOS+MEMS process. ©2009 IEEE.

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Widely applied to RF filtering, AlN microresonators offer the ability to perform additional functions such as impedance matching and single-ended-to- differential conversion. This paper reports microresonators capable of transforming the characteristic impedance from input to output over a wide range while performing low loss filtering. Microresonant transformer theory of operation and equivalent circuit models are presented and compared with measured 2 and 3-Port devices. Impedance transformation ratios as large as 18:1 are realized with insertion losses less than 5.8 dB, limited by parasitic shunt capacitance. These impedance transformers occupy less than 0.052 mm2, orders of magnitude smaller than competing technologies in the VHF and UHF frequency bands. ©2009 IEEE.

Width extensional (WE) super high frequency (SHF) aluminum nitride (AlN) resonators have been fabricated using optical lithography. Solidly anchored WE resonators were shown to be superior to beam anchored resonators of the same size and it was verified that simply scaling resonator area does not improve insertion loss (IL). Resonators with an IL of -6.3 dB into 50 ohms at 4.1 GHz and -7.2 dB at 6.8 GHz have been demonstrated. This type of performance at 6.8 GHz is unprecedented for contour mode resonators and represents a 12.6 dB improvement over recently reported SHF AlN resonators. ©2009 IEEE.

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This paper reports post-CMOS compatible aluminum nitride dual mode resonator filters that realize 4th order band-pass filters in a single resonator device. Dual mode filters at 106 MHz operating in their fundamental mode are reported with insertion losses as low as 5.5 dB when terminated with 150 Ω. A notching technique is demonstrated for varying the 3 dB bandwidth of these filters from 0.15 to 0.7%, overcoming a significant limitation of previous work. Dual mode filters operating at their 5th and 10th overtones are reported scaling the operating frequencies of this class of device to 0.55 and 1.1 GHz.

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This work presents a new type of MEMS resonator based on launching an acoustic wave around a ring. Its maximum frequency is set by electrode spacing and can therefore provide a means for developing resonators with center frequencies in the GHz. In addition since the center frequency is dependent on the average radius it is not subject to lithographic process variations in ring width. We have demonstrated several Ring Waveguide (RWG) Resonators with center frequencies at 484 MHz and 1 GHz. In addition we have demonstrated a 4th order filter based on a RWG design.