Direct measurements of anchor damping in MEMS resonators

The aim of this study is to quantify the energy loss mechanisms for single anchored double-ended tuning forks (DETF) — particularly, gas damping, thermoelastic dissipation (TED) and anchor damping. We performed ring-down measurements of quality factor (Q) as a function of pressure to confirm the absence of air damping. We also measured Q over a wide temperature range including where the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) crosses zero, and consequently the effects from thermoelastic dissipation (TED) become negligible. This provides the first opportunity to directly quantify energy losses due to anchor damping and allows us to vary the mounting configuration to explore the impact of the mounting on the loss.