Damping mechanisms of single-clamped and prestressed double-clamped resonant polymer microbeams

In this article, an investigation of the damping mechanisms of resonant single- and double-clamped polymer microbeams for a frequency range from 10 kHz to 5 MHz is presented. The suspended structures are made of SU-8, an epoxy-type photoresist, by means of a sacrificial layer technique. The vibration was measured with a laser-Doppler vibrometer in high vacuum at different temperatures and at atmospheric pressure. The influence of air damping in rarefied air was investigated and the intrinsic damping mechanisms were determined in high vacuum (p < 0.05 Pa). After excluding a variety of possible damping factors, the dominant intrinsic dissipation mechanism of the single- clamped microbeams was understood to be the material damping with maximum quality factors (Q) of around 70 at 20 degrees C. Quality factors of up to 720 at 20 degrees C were measured for stringlike double-clamped microbeams, which suggest a different intrinsic damping mechanism than material loss. It is shown that internal damping mechanisms due to flexure and elongation have a small impact on the damping of stretched strings. Modeling the clamping loss based on the wave transmission into the suspended anchor plates indicates that it is the dominant intrinsic dissipation in the prestressed double-clamped microresonators. At atmospheric pressure it was shown that at low frequencies the quality factors of single- clamped and stringlike double-clamped microbeams are limited by the squeeze-film air damping. At high frequencies the quality factors are limited by the specific intrinsic damping. In between the two particular regions with a specific dominant damping mechanism the quality factors show a maximum. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.3008032]