A high-performance flexible piezoelectric nanogenerator (PNG) is fabricated by a direct writing method, which acquires both patterned piezoelectric structure and aligned piezoelectric nanowires simultaneously. The voltage output of the as-prepared PNG is nearly 400% compared with that of the traditional spin-coated device due to the effective utilization of stress. This facile printing approach...

Stochastic processes in the form of the classical Brownian motion or internal phonon fluctuations may be studied by the use of a microcantilever. We present certain dynamic aspects of the behavior of the noise and the delayed fluctuations exhibited by a microcantilever. In particular, we present an analytic solution describing the transient response of the oscillator and discuss how self-excita...

Zinc oxide [ZnO] thin films are deposited using a radiofrequency magnetron sputtering method under room temperature. Its crystalline quality, surface morphology, and composition purity are characterized by X-ray diffraction [XRD], atomic force microscopy [AFM], field-emission scanning electron microscopy [FE-SEM], and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy [EDS]. XRD pattern of the ZnO thin film ...

Recent terrorist events have demonstrated that an urgent and widespread need exists for the development of novel sensors for threat detection, especially biowarfare agents. The advent of inexpensive, mass-produced microcantilever sensors promises to bring about a revolution in detection of terrorist threats. Extremely sensitive and highly selective sensors can be developed for using a microcant...

Piezoelectric actuators (PEAs) have been widely used in micro- and nanopositioning applications due to their fine resolution, rapid responses, and large actuating forces. However, a major deficiency of PEAs is that their accuracy is seriously limited by hysteresis. This paper presents adaptive model predictive control technique for reducing hysteresis in PEAs based on autoregressive exogenous m...

A study was conducted to demonstrate the applications of microcantilevers in biomedical and thermo/fluid fields. The deflection of the microcantilevers due to biomaterial and turbulence effects was highlighted in this work. The novel patented microcantilever assemblies that were presented in this study can increase the signal and decrease the unfavorable deflection due to flow disturbances. Thi...

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...

An array of three identical piezoelectric microcantilever sensors (PEMSs) consisting of a lead zirconate titanate layer bonded to a glass layer was fabricated and examined for simultaneous, in situ, real-time, all-electrical detection of Bacillus anthracis (BA) spores in an aqueous suspension using the first longitudinal extension mode of resonance. With anti-BA antibody immobilized on the sens...

Rheological measurements in biological liquids yield insights into homeostasis and provide information on important molecular processes that affect fluidity. We present a fully automated cantilever-based method for highly precise and sensitive measurements of microliter sample volumes of human blood plasma coagulation (0.009 cP for viscosity range 0.5-3 cP and 0.0012 g/cm3 for density range 0.9...

Bimaterial microcantilevers are used in numerous applications in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) for thermal, mechanical, optical, tribological and biological functionalities. Unfortunately, the residual stress-induced curvature and combined effects of creep and stress relaxation in the thin film significantly compromises the performance of these structures. To fully understand the themom...