Effect of residual stress on resonant frequency in Nitinol based thin film resonator

Abstract

Abstract This current work focuses on the study of residual stress introduced in thin surface micromachined films due to the thermal stress. A model is presented here to study the change in thermal residual stress as the temperature changes and in turn how this change affects the resonant frequency of the resonator. The model uses two design; a resonator with straight and folded cantilevers. This work also involves in analysing the resonator performance as the material properties are changed. The analyses is done on Nitinol which is a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA). The simulation is carried out on COMSOL Multiphysics.