A peristaltic micropump was fabricated and characterized. The micropump was fabricated using soft lithography, and actuated using piezoelectric bimorph cantilevers. The micropump channel was formed by bonding two layers of PDMS, mixed at 5:1 and 30:1 ratios. The channel was fabricated in the 5:1 layer using replica molding (REM), where a very simple and inexpensive template was made by straddli...

We have modeled and analyzed the performance of two types of piston-like out-of-plane motion micromechanical structures: a conventional microstructure, which has a single bimorph region, and a flip-overbimaterial (FOB) microstructure, which has two bimorph regions respectively located on the top and bottom sides of the structure. For both structures, simple analytical expressions of their end-p...

Two new cantilever-type polyoxometalates Na(5)(NH(4)){V(IV)[(Mo(2)O(6))CH(3)C(O)(PO(3))(2)](2)}.13H(2)O (1) and (NH(4))(4){V(IV)[(Mo(2)O(6))NH(3)CH(2)CH(2)CH(2)C(O)(PO(3))(2)](2)}.6H(2)O (2) have been synthesized and characterized by IR spectroscopy, UV-visible spectroscopy, elemental analysis, TG analysis, XPS, (31)P NMR and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The structure analysis reveals that...

Flexoelectricity allows a dielectric material to polarize in response to a mechanical bending moment and, conversely, to bend in response to an electric field. Compared with piezoelectricity, flexoelectricity is a weak effect of little practical significance in bulk materials. However, the roles can be reversed at the nanoscale. Here, we demonstrate that flexoelectricity is a viable route to le...

We propose a spiral-shaped piezoelectric bimorph power harvester operating with coupled flexural and extensional vibration modes for applications to low frequency energy sources. A theoretical analysis is performed and the computational results show that the spiral structure has relatively low operating frequency compared to beam power harvesters of the same size. It is found that to optimize t...

We have calculated the thermal noise of a v-shaped AFM cantilever (Microlever, Type E, Thermomicroscopes) by means of a finite element analysis. The modal shapes of the first 10 eigenmodes are displayed as well as the numerical constants, which are needed for the calibration using the thermal noise method. In the first eigenmode, values for the thermomechanical noise of the z-displacement at 22...

Due to developments in additive manufacturing, the production of piezoelectric materials with complex geometries is becoming viable and enabling the manufacturing of thicker harvesters. Therefore, in this study a piezoelectric harvesting device is modelled as a bimorph cantilever beam with a series connection and an intermediate metallic substrate using the plain strain hypothesis. On the other...

The operating characteristics of a novel phase-shifting interferometer are presented. Interference arises by reflecting the light from a sample back into the cavity of a cw He-Ne laser. Changes in phase and fringe visibility are calculated from an overdetermined set of phase-shifted intensity measurements with the phase shifts being introduced with an electro-optic modulator. The interferometer...

We present a novel design approach for the power optimization of cantilever-based shape memory alloy (SMA)/Si bimorph microactuators as well their microfabrication and in situ characterization. A major concern upon miniaturization SMA/Si conventional double-beam cantilever designs is that direct Joule heating generates large size-dependent temperature gradient along length cantilevers, which si...