Scaling of amplitude-frequency-dependence nonlinearities in electrostatically transduced microresonators

This paper studies the scaling of nonlinearities in double-ended-tuning-fork microresonators. We find that the increase in resonant frequency associated with beam length reduction strongly improves current handling. For example, shortening the beams by a factor of 5 results in 20- and 100-fold increases in resonant frequency and sustainable signal current, respectively. Using the nonlinear models and scaling rules outlined in this work, we present considerations for optimization of the resonant structure and its electrostatic gap size. (C) 2007 American Institute of Physics.