Has anyone worked with MEMS resonators for timing?

[DJPhil]

I was just poking around the wonderful world of ceramic resonators and crystals, and saw a category for these at Mouser.
Most of the literature I can find about these is laid on pretty thick with marketing piffle, so I thought I'd ask around and see if anyone's worked with them yet.

Is anyone familiar with the basic benefits and drawbacks vs. quartz?
What sorts of projects would benefit from this technology?

It seems like MEMS will be the timing widget of choice when it gets better and cheaper. It seems like they're advancing at such a pace that it'll be hard to have good answers for these questions that are current or will last long, but I think we'll all start hearing more about these soon.

What do you folks think?

[Zero999]

I've never heard of it before.

I Googled it and found this article.
http://www.sitime.com/news/articles/mems_manufacturing.pdf

[mikeselectricstuff]

I think teh major benefit is they are made of silicon, and so can integrate oscillators and dividers on-chip, and can be packaged in conventional plastic packages instead of hermetically sealed metal/ceramic.
I think they are also more resiliant to shock and vibration.

[Zero999]

I suppose in future there will be microcontrollers with clocks more accurate than today's crystal oscillators without any external components.

[JohnS_AZ]

They would also be easier to temperature compensate at the silicon level ... ie. sensor on the same substrate.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I suppose in future there will be microcontrollers with clocks more accurate than today's crystal oscillators without any external components.

Microchip already do one with 0.25%  onboard RC OSC to allow USB with no resonator. Many now do 1% which is fine for serial comms.

[Zero999]

Microchip already do one with 0.25%  onboard RC OSC to allow USB with no resonator. Many now do 1% which is fine for serial comms.

0.25% is very poor compared to a piezo crystal, to put is into perspective, if one used such a MCU to build a clock with, it could loose or gain 3 minutes and 36 seconds per day which is +/- 21h 54m 54s per year.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Microchip already do one with 0.25%  onboard RC OSC to allow USB with no resonator. Many now do 1% which is fine for serial comms.

0.25% is very poor compared to a piezo crystal, to put is into perspective, if one used such a MCU to build a clock with, it could loose or gain 3 minutes and 36 seconds per day which is +/- 21h 54m 54s per year.

Absolutely - there will always be apps that need crystals, or MEMs once they get good enough, but RC oscs are already eating into ceramic resonator, and low-end Xtal territory.  Once you get accurate enough for UART and USB using RC, the number of apps that need the increased accuracy of a crystal reduces significantly.