SiC-bonded diamond materials produced by pressureless reactive infiltration of preforms with silicon show high hardness and wear resistance. These properties are due to the relatively volume content approximately 50 vol% mechanically strong interface between SiC. To determine bending strength individual interfaces SiC, micro-cantilevers were prepared focused ion beam milling at 13 grain boundar...

In atomic force microscopy, cantilevers with a reflective coating are often used to reduce optical shot noise for deflection detection. However, static AFM experiments can be limited by classical noise and therefore may not benefit from a reduction in shot noise. Furthermore, the cantilever coating has the detrimental side-effect of coupling light power fluctuations into true cantilever bending...

Recent work has demonstrated the feasibility of employing three dimensional (3D) protein hydrogels, fabricated using multiphoton-induced photochemistry, as chemically responsive microactuators in ‘‘lab on a chip’’ devices. In addition, these materials show great promise as cell capture/incubation devices, allowing single bacterial cells to reproduce into multicellular constructs with ‘‘user-def...

For different metals and varying geometries, this paper presents simulations of electrostatically actuated MEMS cantilevers regarding their influence on pull-in voltage actuation speed. Three-dimensional electromechanical modeling including many non-linearities has been performed to study some static but mainly dynamic features. The results show that the involved parameters have influences spee...