Nonlinear behavior of the capacitively coupled NEMS resonator operating close to the nonlinear regime cancellation

In this paper we present a 0-level package NEMS-on-CMOS resonator developed at SilTerra (Malaysia) for low cost frequency references. The characterization of the capacitively coupled resonator shows the coexistence of high order nonlinear terms that, close to the Duffing nonlinear terms cancellation, allows the simultaneous appearance of both, the mechanical and the electrical nonlinear regime. From the open loop characterization, we can conclude that there is an optimum biasing point close to the nonlinear regime cancellation where the power handling of the NEMS can be maximized. At the same time, a study of the frequency-amplitude evolution has shown that it is possible to obtain an operation point beyond the critical point where the resonance frequency does not depend of the amplitude fluctuations locally.