Frequency Doubling in Wirelessly Actuated Multiferroic MEMS Cantilevers

Abstract

Wireless multiferroics is an emerging field taking advantage of energy efficient multiferroic coupling to design and develop ultra-conformal, electrically-small antennas. To date, all work on MEMS scale multiferroic devices utilize linear multiferroic coupling. In this work, we present the first demonstration of frequency doubling through nonlinear multiferroics in MEMS resonators. Multiferroic composite cantilevers are fabricated and tested, and it is shown that these resonators can be wirelessly driven to mechanical resonance with magnetic fields at half of the resonant frequency by utilizing perpendicular magnetic poling. This is a potential method for low noise measurement of wireless signals, a problem that plagues all electrically-small wireless devices, which would revolutionize the emerging field of wireless multiferroic devices.