Abstract
We describe micromechanical structures that are capable of sensing both electrostatic fields and electromagnetic fields over a wide frequency range. Typically, sensing of electromagnetic waves is achieved with electrically conducting antennas, which despite the many advantages do not exhibit high sensitivity over a broad frequency range. An important aspect of our present work is that, in contrast to traditional antennas, the dimensions of micromechanical oscillators sensitive to electromagnetic waves can be much smaller than the wavelength. We characterized the micromechanical oscillators and measured responses to electric fields and estimated the performance limits by evaluating the signal-to-noise ratio theoretically and experimentally.
