An Experimental Study of Nonlinear Limits in High-Q Silicon Vibrating Micro-and Nanomechanical Sensors

In designing micro-scale vibrating sensors, the achievement of very high quality factor (Q) resonators working in bending mode remains a major issue. Nevertheless even though a high Q has several advantages, it enhances the chance of nonlinear vibrations. Special attention has been paid in this work to explore experimentally the nonlinear limitations of single-crystal silicon bending beam resonators as a function of the quality factor and the geometry of the resonator using an original ex-situ measurement technique with a detection limit down to 1 nm.