April 2017 edition – Vol.9 no.4

2023 International Conference on Microelectronics (ICM)
from December 17 to 20, 2023, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
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2023 IEEE 11th International Conference on Systems and Control (ICSC)
from December 18 to 20, 2023, Sousse, Tunisia.
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2024 37th International Conference on VLSI Design and 2024 23rd International Conference on Embedded Systems (VLSID)
from January 6 to 10, 2024, Kolkata, India.
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2024 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC)
from February 18 to 22, 2024, San Francisco, California, USA.
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2024 IEEE 15th Latin America Symposium on Circuits and Systems (LASCAS)
from February 27 to March 1, 2024, Punta del Este, Uruguay.
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2024 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC)
from April 21 to 24, 2024, Denver, Colorado, USA.
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2024 IEEE 6th International Conference on AI Circuits and Systems (AICAS)
from April 22 to 25, 2024, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
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2024 9th International Conference on Integrated Circuits, Design, and Verification (ICDV)
from June 6 to 7, 2024, Hanoi, Vietnam.
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2024 61st ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC)
from June 23 to 27, 2024, San Francisco, California, USA.
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2024 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME)
from July 15 to 19, 2024, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
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Prof. Frédéric Nabki
École de technologie supérieure
Member of ReSMiQ since 2009

Prof. Frederic Nabki received his Ph.D. from McGill University on the topic of above-IC MEMS resonators for timing applications. He was an Associate Professor in microelectronics engineering at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Currently, he is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS) and is a member of the Communications and Microelectronic Integration Laboratory (LACIME) at the ETS. He is also a cofounder of the institutional Research Centre on the Co-design and Fabrication of Microsystems at UQAM (CoFaMic). His research interests include microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and analog, RF, and mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs), specifically focusing on the creation of next generation MEMS processes and devices, the integration of MEMS devices with CMOS systems, the modeling of MEMS devices, and the design of integrated circuits such as phase-locked loops, sensor interfaces, and ultra-wideband wireless transceivers.He also jointly manages the Microtechnology and Microsystems Laboratory (Micro2). He has contributed to two book chapters on MEMS resonators, published several publications on MEMS and ICs, and holds 15 patents. In 2015, he was awarded the UQAM Faculty of Science Early Career Outstanding Researcher Award. Prof. Nabki currently serves as the Treasurer of the Montreal Section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and is a member of the Executive Board of ReSMiQ. More details

Below is a selection of publications in recent years followed by representative work.

1. 18-MHz Silicon Lamé Mode Resonators with Corner and Central Anchor Architectures in a Dual-Wafer SOI Technology. Elsayed, M.Y., Nabki, F., Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 2017.
2. Piezoelectric bulk mode disk resonator post-processed for enhanced quality factor performance. Elsayed, M.Y., Nabki, F., Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 2017.
3. A 170-dBΩ CMOS TIA With 52-pA Input-Referred Noise and 1-MHz Bandwidth for Very Low Current Sensing. Taherzadeh-Sani, M., Hussain Hussaini, S.M., Rezaee-Dehsorkh, H., Nabki, F., Sawan, M., IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, 2017.
4. A 0.13-μm CMOS Dynamically Reconfigurable Charge Pump for Electrostatic MEMS Actuation. Alameh, A.H., Nabki, F., IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, 2016.
5. Y. Elsayed, P.-O. Beaulieu, J. Briere, M. Menard, and F. Nabki, "A novel technique for die-level post-processing of released optical MEMS," IOP Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, vol. 26, no. 5, p. 0057001, April 2016. [NSERC Nabki/Menard]
6. Y. Elsayed, P.-V. Cicek, F. Nabki, and M. N. El-Gamal, "Bulk mode disk resonator with transverse piezoelectric actuation and electrostatic tuning," IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 252-261, February 2016. [NSERC El-Gamal/Nabki]
7. Basaligheh, P. Saffari, M. Taherzadeh-Sani, and Nabki, "A highly efficient and linear broadband common-drain CMOS power amplifier with transformer-based input-matching network," IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, vol. 25, no. 12, pp. 814-816, May 2015.
8. Y. Elsayed, P.-V. Cicek, F. Nabki, and M. N. El-Gamal, "Surface micromachined combined magnetometer/accelerometer for above-IC integration," IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 1029-1037, August 2015. [NSERC El-Gamal/Nabki]
9. Taherzadeh-Sani and F. Nabki, "A 350-MS/s continuous-sime delta-sigma modulator with a digitallyassisted binary-DAC and a 5-Bits two-step-ADC quantizer in 130-nm CMOS,"IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 1914-1919, September 2015. [NSERC Nabki]

18-MHz Silicon Lamé Mode Resonators with Corner and
Central Anchor Architectures in a Dual-Wafer SOI Technology

Micromachined resonators are receiving continuously increasing attention due to their small sizes compared to conventional crystal-based resonators as well as their potential for integration with other MEMS resonators and circuits on the same chip, which can be especially advantageous for handheld electronic applications (e.g., smartphones and tablets) where weight, size, and cost are particularly critical parameters. Notably, timing applications, where the resonator is used as a frequency reference in an oscillator circuit for the timing of electronics, is a prime example of the potential of MEMS resonators. Such applications require very high resonator quality factors (Q) and often benefit from high resonance frequency (f) of the resonators. As such, the f⋅Q product is an important figure-of-merit to position different MEMS resonators. Interest in MEMS resonators for timing applications is increasing, as their phase noise performance is improving due to the higher performance of the MEMS resonator and the sustaining circuitry. This paper presents Lamé bulk mode square resonators fabricated in a novel silicon-on-insulator technology, MicraGEM-Si. Structures are formed by patterning two wafers with several etched depths and wafer bonding them to create the released movable resonator structures. Two distinct anchoring architectures are studied (Fig. 1): one with suspension beams at the nodal corner points, and the other with a central anchoring support. The center support architecture can be suitable for realizing high-performance gyroscopes. Resonators with different support sizes are fabricated and characterized (sing the test setup in Fig.2. Fabricated devices were measured to operate at a resonance frequency of ~18 MHz and quality factors as high as ~42000 in atmospheric pressure, which to the best of our knowledge is the highest reported to date at such an ambient pressure, and ~871000 in 100-mTorr vacuum, corresponding to a f·Q product of ~1.6×1013.

Fig. 1. Simplified diagram of (a), (b) the exploded and assembled views of the proposed resonator with corner supports, and (c), (d) the exploded and assembled views of the proposed resonator with center support.

Fig. 2. Differential test setup used for characterizing the fabricated resonators.

Fig. 3. Measured resonance characteristics at under 1 mTorr vacuum level for (a) resonators with 2 μm -wide corner supports, and (b) resonators with center support of 7 μm square side length.