12:30
In the operation of high frequency resonators in micro electromechanical systems (MEMS)there is a strong need to be able to accurately determine the energy loss rates or alternativelythe quality of the resonance. The resonance quality is directly related to a designer’s abilityto assemble high fidelity system response for signal filtering, for example. This hasimplications on robustness and quality of electronic communication and also stronglyinfluences overall rates of power consumption in such devices – i.e. battery life. Pastdesign work was highly focused on the design of single resonators; this arena of work hasnow given way to active efforts at the design and construction of arrays of coupledresonators. The behavior of such systems in the laboratory shows un-necessarily largespread in operational characteristics, which are thought to be the result of manufacturingvariations. However, such statements are difficult to prove due to a lack of availablemethods for predicting resonator damping – even the single resonator problem is difficult.The physical problem requires the modeling of the behavior of a resonant structure (or setof structures) supported by an elastic half-space. The half-space (chip) serves as a physicalsupport for the structure but also as a path for energy loss. Other loss mechanisms can ofcourse be important but in the regime of interest for us, loss of energy through theanchoring support of the structure to the chip is the dominant effect.
The construction of a basic discretized model of such a system leads to a system ofequations with complex-symmetric (not Hermitian) structure. The complex-symmetryarises from the introduction of a radiation boundary conditions to handle the semi-infinitecharacter of the half-space region. Requirements of physical accuracy dictate rather finediscretization and, thusly, large systems of equations. The core to the extraction of relevantphysical performance parameters is dependent upon the underlying modeling framework.In three dimensional settings of practical interest, such systems are too large to be handleddirectly and must be solved iteratively. In this talk, I will cover the physical background ofthe problem class of interest, how such systems can be modeled, and then solved. Particularinterest will be paid to the radiation boundary conditions (perfectly matched layers versushigher order absorbing boundary conditions), issues associated with frequency domainversus time domain methods, and how these choices interact with iterative solvertechnologies in sometimes unexpected ways. Time permitting I will also touch upon the issue of harmonic inversion methods of this class of problems.