Suppression of thermoelastic damping in MEMS beam resonators by piezoresistivity

Microelectronic mechanical (MEM) beam resonators with high quality factors are always preferred in practical applications. As one of the damping sources, thermoelastic damping (TED) caused by irreversible heat flows is usually considered as an upper limit of the overall damping effect. A new method is proposed in this work to compensate TED by taking advantage of the piezoresistive effect. Such a method is implemented by applying an electrostatic field along the beam length with a negative piezoresistive coefficient. During a resonance, the stretched part of the beam generates a higher electrical power density and thus a higher temperature, while the compressed region leads to a lower temperature. Such a temperature distribution is opposite to the temperature change caused by the thermoelastic effect. The working principle is described by a set of coupled differential equations, which are subsequently solved by the finite element method. The result indicates that the TED in the beam resonators can be completely compensated when the strength of electrical field is tuned to a critical value, namely CEF. The value of the CEF is further analyzed by a series of parametric studies on various material properties and geometric factors. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.