Temperature Hysteresis in Piezoresistive Microcantilevers

We observe significant temperature hysteresis in the resonant frequency and quality factor of silicon piezoresistive microcantilevers from room temperature down to 40 K. The hysteresis becomes increasingly pronounced as the support beam length is reduced from 100 μm to 30 μm, leading to over a twenty-fold difference in Q values between the temperature sweep downwards and upwards for the 30 μm support beam device. Our work suggests that temperature hysteresis is an important consideration for thermal-piezoresistive oscillators and other microelectromechanical resonators that require multiple anchor points.