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A. Ababneh, A. Al-Omari, H. Qiu, T. Manzaneque, J. Hernando-Garcia, J.L. Sànchez-Rojas, A. Bittner, U. Schmid, H. Seidel:
"Pressure Dependence of the Quality Factor of Piezoelectrically driven AlN/Si-Microcantilevers";
Talk: SPIE Microtechnologies 2013, Grenoble, France; 04-24-2013 - 04-26-2013; in: "Proceedings of SPIE", 8763 (2013), ISSN: 0277-786x.

In this work, the fabrication process of piezoelectric AlN cantilevers is presented. The cantilevers were electrically
characterized in a vacuum chamber offering the possibility to close-loop control the back pressure from atmospheric
conditions down to 5x10-3 mbar. The quality factor (Q factor) is an important figure of merit to evaluate the performance
of micro-resonators. In particular, two different modes were detected and analyzed. The first bending mode detected at
19.5 kHz has a quality factor of 470 at atmospheric pressure which increases continuously to 985 at 1x10-1 mbar. The
corresponding resonant frequency shifted from 19.500 kHz at atmospheric pressure to 19.573 kHz at 5 mbar. Below this
pressure level, the resonance frequency stays unaffected within the measurement accuracy.
The second bending mode detected at 117.264 kHz exhibits a quality factor of about 570 at atmospheric pressure
increasing continuously to 1275 at 1x10-1 mbar. In agreement with the other resonant frequency under investigation the
corresponding resonant frequency decreased from 117.264 kHz at atmospheric pressure to 117.630 kHz at 5 mbar.

Resonantly driven micro cantilevers, piezoelectric, aluminium nitride, quality factor, pressure dependence.