Mechanical Properties Changes During Electrothermal RF Tuning in a Nanoelectromechanical Resonator

This paper demonstrates the electrothermal tuning of a nanoelectromechanical resonator correlated with the mechanical properties of an Al/SiC bilayer beam structure at radio frequencies under the moderate conditions. This study confirms a relatively low change in the quality factor (Q-factor) over a wide range of frequency tuning (Δf
_r
= 2.4 MHz). The effective stress of the beam plays an important role in the resonance frequency modulation and is critical to the Q-factor during electrothermal tuning. The Q-factor was decreased with the stress variation. However, the resonant frequency is linearly tuned on the basis of varied effective beam stresses and no major scarification of the Q-factor was observed.