Enhanced actuation of nanocrystalline diamond microelectromechanical disk resonators with AlN layers

Abstract

A great potential of the use of aluminum nitride (AlN) to enhance the actuation of nanocrystalline diamond (NCD) microelectromechanical system disk resonators is revealed. A disk resonator with a unimorph (AlN/NCD) structure is fabricated by depositing a c-axis oriented AlN on a capacitive NCD disk resonator. The unimorph resonator is piezoelectrically actuated with flexural whispering gallery modes with a relatively large electrode gap spacing, i.e., the spacing which is greater than 1 μm, although this is not possible for the capacitive NCD disk resonator. This result is explained by a finite element method simulation where the piezoelectric actuation turns out to be more effective than the capacitive actuation when the electrode gap spacing is >0.8 μm. The simulation also shows that the electrode gap spacing required for the capacitive actuation to be more effective than the piezoelectric actuation exponentially decreases when the resonator dimension is scaled down for higher frequency operations. Our study indicates that the use of AlN is promising to decrease impedance levels of NCD disk resonators especially for their higher frequency operations.