Attractor Exchanger for Open-Loop Operation of Micromechanical Nonlinear Resonators Using Gap-Spacing Continuation

This work demonstrates for the first time a micromechanical "attractor exchanger" that allows one to swab operation between the attractors at the high- and low-energy branches that coexist in the hysteresis region of a nonlinear resonator. In particular, instead of using the typical frequency sweeping approach to reach the attractor at the high energy branch, gap-spacing continuation is employed here as an alternative space to transfer the stable operation from lower-energy attractor to the other with the permission of a single-frequency drive. The technique enables a new operation scheme that avoids circuits required for generating frequency sweeping signal for applications based on open-loop operation of nonlinear resonators.