Experimental fractal-like instability bands in a resonant silicon-silicon contact pull-in vibration detector

We present theoretical and experimental data on instability bands in a low-power resonant pull-in based MEMS vibration detector. The ohmic Silicon-to-Silicon switch was fabricated in a near-vacuum encapsulation epitaxially sealed process. The device requires a static bias (<;6 V) for operation and responds to vibration in the kilohertz range. Both simulation and experiment show a complex stability region with a fractal-like boundary close to the effective resonance of the device due to the nonlinear dynamics of the system. Our experimental investigations can be used to determine the transfer characteristics for low-power quasi-passive vibration detection.