Course A-1 (9:00 am -12:00am, June 5, 2011)
Design and Analysis of Resonant Micro-Electro-Mechanical Devices

Abstract: Recent years have witnessed breakthrough researches in micromechanical resonators with record high Q and high frequency, creating exciting new research horizons in sensing, energy scavenging, timing and spectral processing.
This short course covers the design and analysis of micromechanical resonators ranging from very low frequency (i.e. sub kHz) to very high frequencies extending into GHz. Single and multi degrees-of-freedom micromechanical resonator design will be discussed. Design of Transducers for actuation and sensing including electrostatic, piezoelectric, thermal, piezoresistive will be covered. Dissipation mechanisms that limit the quality factor of a resonator will be described, including the contribution of phonon interactions in determining the upper limit of f.Q product in micromechanical resonators, and their significance over frequency range will be discussed. Lumped modeling of micromechanical resonators in the electrical domain and numerical simulation methods will be described and various ways of tuning the resonator frequency will be discussed. Other topics will include the choice of materials in constructing a high-Q microresonator, sources of nonlinearity in MEMS resonators, temperature coefficient of frequency, compensation techniques, power handling and impact of process variations on the resonator characteristics. Although micromechanical devices have found way into numerous microsystem applications, practicing engineers know little on how to properly interface, actuate and readout these analog-in-nature devices without compromising signal integrity, dynamic range, signal to noise ratio, Q and power consumption. Principal of electrical Interfaces to resonators, and resonant body transistors will be discussed. Examples of the state-of-the-art research and development work and applications will be included in the course. Throughout the course exciting applications of resonator arrays, beyond frequency references, including multi-axis resonant gyroscopes, gravimetric sensors, energy harvesters and integrated RF filters will reviewed.

Short Biography:
Farrokh Ayazi is a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran, Iran, in 1994 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1997 and 2000, respectively. His main research interest lies in the area of Integrated Micro and Nano Electro-Mechanical Systems (Integrated MEMS/NEMS), with a focus on micro/nano mechanical resonators and mixed-signal interface circuits for MEMS and Sensors.
Dr. Ayazi is an editor for the IEEE/ASME Journal of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems. He has served on the technical program committee of several IEEE conferences such as International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), MEMS, Sensors, and International Frequency Control Symposium (IFCS). He is a 2004 recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the 2004 Richard M. Bass Outstanding Teacher Award (determined by the vote of the ECE senior class), and the Georgia Tech College of Engineering Cutting Edge Research Award for 2001–2002. He and his students won the best paper awards at the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium in 2010 and IEEE Sensors conference in 2007.
Dr. Ayazi is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Qualtré Inc., a
spin-out from his research Laboratory that commercializes multi-axis Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) silicon gyroscopes and six-degrees-of-freedom inertial sensors for consumer electronics and personal navigation systems.