Electrothermally Tunable Bridge Resonator

This paper demonstrates experimentally, theoretically, and numerically a wide-range tunability of an in-plane clamped-clamped microbeam, bridge, and resonator compressed by a force due to electrothermal actuation. We demonstrate that a single resonator can be operated at a wide range of frequencies. The microbeam is actuated electrothermally, by passing a DC current through it. We show that when increasing the electrothermal voltage, the compressive stress inside the microbeam increases, which leads eventually to its buckling. Before buckling, the fundamental frequency decreases until it drops to very low values, almost to zero. After buckling, the fundamental frequency increases, which is shown to be as high as twice the original resonance frequency. Analytical results based on the Galerkin discretization of the Euler Bernoulli beam theory are generated and compared to the experimental data and to simulation results of a multi-physics finite-element model. A good agreement is found among all the results.