A design methodology for fully integrated MEMS and NEMS Pierce oscillators

This work proposes a generic methodology to evaluate the feasibility of designing a Pierce oscillator based on a micro or nanoresonator fabricated with any given CMOS technology and with the constraint of using only one single active transistor. Both the design and the transimpedance gain of the electronics are analytically determined for resonators with capacitive or resistive detection. This approach is applied and validated in the case of (a) an electrostatically actuated clamped-clamped beam resonator using a capacitive transduction, and (b) a piezoresistive crossbeam, both based on a standard 0.13 mu m CMOS technology. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.