This paper describes an electrostatic excited microcantilever sensor operating in static mode that is more sensitive than traditional microcantilevers. The proposed sensor comprises a simple microcantilever with electrostatic excitation ability and an optical or piezoresistive detector. Initially the microcantilever is excited by electrostatic force to near pull-in voltage. The nonlinear behavi...

Nanomechanical motion of bacteria adhered to a chemically functionalized silicon surface is studied by means of a microcantilever. A non-specific binding agent is used to attach Escherichia coli (E. coli) to the surface of a silicon microcantilever. The microcantilever is kept in a liquid medium, and its nanomechanical fluctuations are monitored using an optical displacement transducer. The mot...

Abstract Boundary constraint induced inhomogeneous effects are important for mechanical responses of nano/micro-devices. For microcantilever sensors, the clamped-end effect static deformation, so called effect, has great influence on detection signals. This paper is devoted to developing an alternative model characterize signals DNA-microcantilever. Different from previous concentrated load mod...

The use of multi-segmented Position Sensitive Photodiodes (PSD) to measure microcantilever deflections have been found to produce nonlinear signal output, especially when the dynamic range is large. The reflected beam of the microcantilever may undergo intensity and shape modifications prior to reaching the PSD. In a multi-microcantilever sensor system the variation in the size of the individua...

The mass sensor based on a microcantilever is considered. The mass loading on a sensor-microcantilever is computed by aligning a position of the sensor microcantilever with a reference one. The control function contains information about the loading mass. The problem is reduced to a time varying parameter identification in microcantilever sensors that is addressed via higher order sliding mode ...

This work focuses on studying the effect of the flow conditions and the geometric variation of the microcantilever s supporting system on the microcantilever detection capabilities within a fluidic cell for various pertinent parameters. Such parameters include Reynolds number, height of the fluidic cell, surface reaction constant, and the Schmidt number. The results of this investigation show t...

We demonstrate an in-plane photonic transduction method for microcantilevers, which have been widely investigated for sensor applications. In our approach the microcantilever is etched to form a single mode rib waveguide. Light propagates down the microcantilever and crosses a small gap at the free end of the microcantilever, some of which is captured by an asymmetrical multimode waveguide that...

The present work analyzes theoretically and verifies the advantage of utilizing ɛ-microcantilever assemblies in microsensing applications. The deflection profile of these innovative ɛ-assembly microcantilevers is compared with that of the rectangular microcantilever and modified triangular microcantlever. Various force-loading conditions are considered. The theorem of linear elasticity for thin...

The technical feasibility of monitoring DNA melting and cooling transitions using a microcantilever substrate has been demonstrated and these results were compared with those measured in solution by circular dichroism. DNA hairpins have been immobilized on the surface of gold-coated microcantilever surfaces and their DNA melting and cooling transitions were monitored by nanomechanical deflectio...

A potential binding assay based on binding-driven micromechanical motion is described. Acetylcholine binding protein (AChBP) was used to modify a microcantilever. The modified microcantilever was found to bend on application of the naturally occurring agonist (acetylcholine) or the antagonist (nicotine and d-tubocurarine). Control experiments show that microcantilevers modified without AChBP do...