Electrostatically actuated microbeam resonators as chaotic signal generators: A practical perspective

The biasing requirements to obtain cross-well chaotic motion for in-plane electrostatically driven beam-shaped MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) resonators are investigated for typical actuation/readout topologies. Practical applications such as signal chaotic generators require reasonable and wide enough range voltages (dc and ac) to assure a feasible control in current CMOS or nanotechnologies. We found that these conditions are only obtained when enabling cross-well motion operation instead of in-well operation. Moreover, in contrast to many works that take unfeasible design parameters, we provide for the first time the design rules and biasing ranges required for commercial CMOS technologies and nanotechnology when considering typical parameter values from various fabrication approaches.