Mechanical design of micromachined silicon resonators

This paper presents a detailed study of the design of micromachined silicon resonators. Minimising energy losses through a resonator's supports improves the Q-factor of the device and improves the level of isolation of the resonator from surrounding structural influences. Finite element analysis has been applied to optimise the resonator design. Resonators have been evaluated on an optical fibre interferometer and results confirm the use of FE techniques as a powerful method of improving resonant sensor performance.