Fully-integrated resonant micro-devices for next-generation electronic systems

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Nowadays, in several commercial sectors such as Consumer Electronics, Automotive and Industrial, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have established themselves as an essential vector in enabling an effective interface between the user, the environment and a system's electronic "brain". Particularly, resonant-type MEMS devices have been widely demonstrated to fulfill high-performance tasks including electrical signal filtering, inertial sensing, ultrasonic transduction and gas detection. However, MEMS technology has yet to achieve its full disruptive potential because it is still predominantly restricted to discrete integration schemes for inclusion within complex electronic systems. Indeed, the lack of viable methods for monolithically integrating MEMS and integrated circuits (IC) imposes functional, performance-related, and economic limitations on commercial products such as: *** the inability to incorporate several MEMS devices of similar or different class onto a single IC die;*** larger system size resulting from multiple dice;*** high power consumption because of the electrical parasitic effects related to the interconnections between multiple dice;*** greater costs (e.g., materials, processing, logistics) due to separate IC and MEMS fabrication on distinct dice.******Consequently, the proposed research program attempts to discover and propose answers to the question: How can current technological limitations be overcome in order to enable fully-monolithic next generation systems incorporating IC and MEMS?******Founding this program on prior advances realized towards monolithic integration, we hold that solving our research question revolves around the long-term objective (LTO) of exploring optimal approaches for above-IC integration of resonant MEMS. Advancing knowledge along this LTO is expected, at term, to provide system designers with a methodology and technological framework for seamlessly incorporating MEMS as lumped-cell elements on IC. This LTO will be attained by means of two short-term objectives (STO): to propose novel topologies for optimal resonant MEMS incorporating piezoelectric actuation, and to elaborate a novel fabrication platform technology for optimal IC integration of resonant MEMS. The viability of the proposed methods will be assessed by a third STO: to demonstrate novel integrated resonant devices using the elaborated topologies and fabrication platform.******With a second LTO of providing HQP with multi-disciplinary expertise in microtechnologies, this research program is expected to exert a disruptive impact on the approach, methods and techniques used for designing and producing electronics-based commercial products. As such, the outcomes of this work will provide long-lasting value to Canada's society, industry and research community.