Harmonic analysis method for electromechanical characterizations of MEMS based energy harverters

This paper presents an experimental method based on harmonic distortion analysis to determine mechanical characteristics of MEMS devices to be used as energy scavengers or more generally in widespread MEMS-based applications. This technique uses the mechanical-electrical analogy of MEMS variable capacitor acting as a low -pass filter to give access to both resonant frequency and damping factor of the mechanical system through the determination of the filter parameters as the cut-off frequency. Characteristics of various MEMS devices have been measured using this method and the results are compared to measurements of their resonant frequencies carried out with Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy measurement system.