Clark T.-C. Nguyen (Advisor)

Parametric oscillation provides another avenue to excite micro electro-mechanical resonators into oscillation. Rather than driving the resonator at its resonant frequency, modulating the stiffness of the resonator forces this motion. While this technique can lead to failures, it also can provide methods for frequency division, phase noise reduction, and sustaining oscillations of various frequency with a single amplifier. This work models the voltage conditions for parametric oscillation and compares them to measured results with an accuracy of 15%. Discrepancies caused by...

Vacuum encapsulation of RF disk and beam resonators is often needed to maintain high quality factor and frequency stability. Conventionally, this is performed at the wafer level by anodic, eutectic, fusion, or glass frit bonding. After wafer dicing, packaging proceeds with die attach to the package substrate and plastic over molding. This process leads to many contacts between materials of different coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) resulting in package-induced stress. The focus of this work is to determine the effect of this stress on the temperature stability of...