Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a technique to image surfaces with unprecedented vertical and lateral resolution. Many related techniques have been derived from AFM, taking advantage of local interactions between a tip on a cantilever and a surface. However, cantilevers can also be used for sensing applications. These so-called nanosensors feature extreme sensitivity for the detection of chemi...

We critically discuss the extraction of intrinsic cantilever properties, namely eigenfrequency f n , quality factor Q n and specifically the stiffness k n of the nth cantilever oscillation mode from thermal noise by an analysis of the power spectral density of displacement fluctuations of the cantilever in contact with a thermal bath. The practical applicability of this approach is demonstrated...

In this paper, a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) cantilever sensor was designed, modeled and fabricated to measure the terahertz (THz) radiation induced photoacoustic (PA) response of gases under low vacuum conditions. This work vastly improves cantilever sensitivity over previous efforts, by reducing internal beam stresses, minimizing out of plane beam curvature and optimizing beam dampin...

Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Abstract Cantilever sensors have attracted considerable attention over the last decade because of their potential a...

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...

In this paper, a plane quadrilateral element with rotational degrees of freedom is developed. Present formulation is based on a hybrid functional with independent boundary displacement and internal optimum strain field. All the optimality constraints, including being rotational invariant, omitting the parasitic shear error and satisfying Fliepa’s pure bending test, are considered. Moreover, the...

Cantilever based sensors are a promising tool for a very diverse spectrum of biological sensors. They have been used for the detection of proteins, DNA, antigens, bacteria viruses and many other biologically relevant targets. Although cantilever sensing has been described for over 20 years, there are still no viable commercial cantilever-based sensing products on the market. Several reasons can...

The atomic force microscope (AFM) has become an essential tool for imaging the surface topography of conductors and insulators on a microand nanoscale level [1]. In addition, AFM has also been powerful in nanomachining [2]. Cracks may occur in the AFM cantilever during the nanomachining experiments or in the fabrication of cantilever. The cantilever with cracks will affect its performance in us...

The atomic force microscope (AFM) has become an essential tool for the measurement of surface characteristics of diverse materials on a microand nanoscale level [1]. The resolution of measurements for the AFM cantilever is related to its vibration sensitivity. Many researchers have much interest in studying the resonant frequency and sensitivity analysis of AFM cantilevers [2 4]. Cracks may be ...

One of the bio-sensing mechanisms is mechanical. Rather than measuring shift in resonance frequency, we adopt to measure the change in spring constant due to adsorption, as one of the fundamental sensing mechanism. This study explains  determination of spring constant of a surface functionalized micro machined micro cantilever, which resonates in a trapezoidal cavity-on Silicon wafer, with the ...