Automatic Pico Laser Trimming System for Silicon MEMS Resonant Devices Based on Image Recognition

Laser trimming promises an increasing yield in microfabrication for the high performance Micro ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) resonant devices by overcoming manufacturing tolerances and tuning sensors or actuators for certain operating conditions. How to achieve a high precision and efficiency trimming at low cost is the critical issue that the technical communities are most concerned. In this paper, we proposed an automatic laser trimming system for silicon MEMS devices based on a picosecond laser source and image recognition technique (IRT). Through the design of laser focusing optical path and coaxial imaging optical path, the observation of laser machining process is realized. A set of picosecond laser trimming parameters is determined by experiments, which enables a 4um width trench on the silicon resonator. Compared with the femtosecond laser trimming systems, the cost of the picolaser system is reduced by more than 60%. The shape matching algorithm based on OpenCV and the chord-to-point distance accumulation (CPDA) algorithm for MEMS resonators image measurement solve the problem of inefficiency of manual trimming for complex resonators. A dual-mass tuning fork resonator is used to demonstrate the feasibility of the trimming approach. It is shown that the system realizes a fine-tuning (< 0.3Hz) of the resonant frequencies. The trimming time of a single device using the automatic trimming method is reduced from more than 1 hour manual trimming to less than 1 minute. Finally, the structural stiffness imbalance of tuning fork resonator caused by the manufacturing error is eliminated, which verifies the feasibility of the system.