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...

   Micro-electroactive polymers have wide applications from industry to healthcare. Artificial muscles, microvalves, microswitches, haptic sensing, blood pressure and pulse monitoring are some potential applications for micro-electroactive polymers. The most advantage of micro-electroactive polymers as sensors and actuators is bio-compatibility and low power threshold for large deformations...

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...

The paper deals with the mechanical behavior of a micro-beam bonded with two piezoelectric layers. The micro-beam is suspended over a fixed substrate and undergoes the both piezoelectric and electrostatic actuation. The piezoelectric layers are poled through the thickness and equipped with surface electrodes. The equation governing the micro-beam deflection under electrostatic pressure is deriv...

We report a modular atomic force microscope (AFM) design for biomolecular experiments. The AFM head uses readily available components and incorporates deflection-based optics and a piezotube-based cantilever actuator. Jetted-polymers have been used in the mechanical assembly, which allows rapid manufacturing. In addition, a FeCo-tipped electromagnet provides high-force cantilever actuation with...

We describe the use of parametric amplification to substantially increase the magnetoelectric (ME) coefficient of multiferroic cantilevers. Parametric amplification has been widely used in sensors and actuators based on optical, electronic, and mechanical resonators to increase transducer gain. In our system, a microfabricated mechanical cantilever with a magnetostrictive layer is driven at its...

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is a near-field technique to generate high-resolution images of surfaces. A micro-fabricated elastic beam with an integrated sharp sensor tip at its end is scanned over the sample surface. With various dynamic modes, leading to Force Modulation Microscopy [1], Ultrasonic Force Microscopy [2], Atomic Force Acoustic Microscopy (AFAM) [3–5], Microdeformation Microscop...

For the use of green energy and ubiquitous computing, this study investigates miniature electric generators that are constructed with piezoelectric benders. Electric power is generated by vibratory deformation of piezoelectric benders. Three different designs of piezoelectric generators are created and compared in this study by using mechanics analysis. The result shows that the cantilever desi...

We have examined both experimentally and theoretically a piezoelectric unimorph cantilever as a liquid viscosity-and-density sensor. The fabricated piezoelectric unimorph consisted of a PbO•ZrO2•TiO2 ~PZT! layer on a thin stainless-steel plate. In addition to a driving electrode, a sensing electrode was placed on top of the PZT layer, permitting the direct measurement of the resonance frequency...

Micro-cantilever arrays with different dimensions are fabricated by micromachining technique onto silicon <1 0 0> substrate. These sputtered Gold-Coated micro-cantilevers were later surface functionalized. Scanning Electron Microscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy and Optical SWLI using LASER probe are employed to characterize the morphology and image measurement of the micro-cantilever arrays, resp...