Charging and discharging phenomena in electrostatically-driven single-crystal-silicon MEM resonators: DC bias dependence and influence on the series resonance frequency

This paper presents a first study concerned with charging and discharging phenomena in single crystal silicon MEM resonators. It is shown that the DC voltage required for the device operation induces a residual voltage between the resonator and its driving electrode, which is attributed to dielectric charging. The residual voltage can affect the device series resonance frequency and is determined from the measurements. The residual voltage maximum amplitude and the charging rate depend not only on the stressing voltage amplitude but also on the polarization.