Automated Resonance Matching for CMOS MEMS Micro-Resonators

This paper reports the design and characterization of a phase-locked loop-based control scheme implemented in a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor process for resonance matching between capacitive micro-resonators. The system-on-chip implementation can be utilized for calibrating individual resonance in a large sensor array or matching the drive and sense modes for micromachined vibratory gyroscopes. The target micro-resonator acts as a voltage-controlled oscillator in the control loop with the resonance being adjusted by the electrostatic spring-softening effect. Sinusoidal test inputs applied to the control loop are shown to provide better resonance matching than square-wave inputs. This paper successfully demonstrates automated matching by pulling the resonance of a target microresonator within 2.4 × 10
^-2
% of the reference resonance under atmospheric pressure.