Hermetically-sealed evanescent-mode resonators utilizing packaging as cavities

This paper presents a low-cost evanescent-mode high-Q resonator novel in its utilization of commercially-available hermetic packaging as the resonator cavity. The resonators are implemented with both nickel and gold-plated cavities and achieve measured unloaded quality factors of 527 and 658 respectively at their resonances of 17.22 GHz. A comparison between the nickel and gold implementations is discussed accompanied by measured and simulated results. The hermetically sealed nature of this resonator lends itself well to harsh-environment applications that require high-quality RF front-ends.