A Low Power Micro-Electromechanical Resonator-Based Digital to Analog Converter

We present a novel design of a low-power micro-electro-mechanical digital to analog converter (DAC) based on a clamped-clamped micro-beam resonator with multiple split electrodes and capacitive airgaps of various widths. The proposed n-bit DAC device operates at a single drive frequency and can access one of 2^n distinct stable states based on the applied digital combination. The digital inputs (binary numbers) modulate the beam resonance frequency using the electrostatic softening effect, where the larger binary numbers result in higher beam resonance frequency. Although the tested device consumes 151 pJ per conversion step with a conversion rate of 0.64 kHz, we show that by moderate downscaling of the device dimensions, femto-joules energy consumption and MHz conversion rates are attainable.