This study proposes a new microcantilever design with a rectangular hole at the fixed end of the cantilever that is more sensitive than conventional ones. A commercial finite element analysis software ANSYS is used to analyze it. The Stoney equation is first used to calculate the surface stress induced moment, and then applied to the microcantilever free end to produce deflection. The stress an...

An analytical expression relating mass and position of a particle attached on a cantilever to the resulting change in cantilever resonant frequency is derived. Theoretically, the position and mass of the attached particle can be deduced by combining measured resonant frequencies of several bending modes. This finding is verified experimentally using a microscale cantilever with and without an a...

A composite self-excited PZT-glass cantilever (4mm in length and 2mm width) was fabricated and used to measure attachment of model protein and a model pathogen. Key feature of the microcantilever is that its resonant frequency is dependent on its mass. The cantilever had a mass sensitivity of 5x10-11 g/Hz. The change in resonant frequency was measured as antibody, protein, reacts with the amine...

The static pull-in instability of beam-type micro-electromechanical systems is theoretically investigated. Two engineering cases including cantilever and double cantilever micro-beam are considered. Considering the mid-plane stretching as the source of the nonlinearity in the beam behavior, a nonlinear size-dependent Euler-Bernoulli beam model is used based on a modified couple stress theory, c...

Micromolar levels of urea [1–20 mM] on surface micromachined polysilicon cantilever beams immobilized with the enzyme urease was studied. Urea hydrolyses to ammonia and carbon dioxide which are volatile in nature. Monitoring the change in resonance frequency of a urease immobilized cantilever beam during the course of urea hydrolysis, mediated by the immobilized enzyme can give us information o...

Dynamical response of nanomechanical cantilever structures immersed in a viscous fluid is important to in vitro single-molecule force spectroscopy, biomolecular recognition of disease-specific proteins, and the study of microscopic protein dynamics. Here we study the stochastic response of biofunctionalized nanomechanical cantilever beams in a viscous fluid. Using the fluctuation-dissipation th...

We present theoretical and experimental results on the mechanical damping of an atomic force microscope cantilever strongly coupled to a self-assembled InAs quantum dot. When the cantilever oscillation amplitude is large, its motion dominates the charge dynamics of the dot which in turn leads to nonlinear, amplitude-dependent damping of the cantilever. We observe highly asymmetric line shapes o...

We present here the behavior of the resonance frequency of porous anodic alumina cantilever arrays during water vapor adsorption and emphasize their possible use in the micromechanical sensing of humidity levels at least in the range of 10-22%. The sensitivity of porous anodic aluminium oxide cantilevers (Δf/Δm) and the humidity sensitivity equal about 56 Hz/pg and about 100 Hz/%, respectively....

An efficient method for optically actuating a micromechanical cantilever is presented for the first time to our knowledge. Measurable responses can be obtained for moderate light sources if electron tunneling occurs between the cantilever tip and a metallic contact below it. The small deflection of the cantilever that is due to light pressure is sufficient then to produce large tunneling curren...

We have developed a cantilever holder for spurious-free cantilever excitation in liquid by piezoactuator. In the holder, generation and propagation of an acoustic wave are suppressed by "acoustic barriers," i.e., boundaries between two materials having significantly different acoustic impedance while cantilever vibration is excited by "flexure drive mechanism" utilizing elastic deformation of a...