Impact of bandwidth and number of measurement points on Q-factor measurement precision in piezoelectric MEMS resonators

Abstract:
Piezoelectric MEMS resonators are commonly used in various sensor application scenarios. Commonly, such devices are operated in the linear regime, in which case each resonance can be described by three quantities: resonance frequency, amplitude and quality factor. In this work, we study the impact of bandwidth and number of frequency measurement points on the measurement precision of the resonance frequency and quality factor using a lock-in amplifier approach. We provide a set of guidelines to prepare frequency sweep measurements for piezoelectric MEMS resonators and discuss the trade-off between increased measurement precision and measurement duration.