Addressing geometric nonlinearities with cantilever microelectromechanical systems: Beyond the Duffing model

We report on low-temperature measurements performed on microelectromechanical systems driven deeply into the nonlinear regime. The materials are kept in their elastic domain while the observed nonlinearity is purely of geometrical origin. Two techniques are used, harmonic drive and free decay. For each case, we present an analytic theory fitting the data. The harmonic drive is fit with a modified Lorentzian line shape obtained from an extended version of Landau and Lifshitz's nonlinear theory. The evolution in the time domain is fit with an amplitude-dependent frequency decaying function derived from the Lindstedt-Poincare theory of nonlinear differential equations. The technique is perfectly generic and can be straightforwardly adapted to any mechanical device made of ideally elastic constituents, and which can be reduced to a single degree of freedom, for an experimental definition of its nonlinear dynamics equation.