To enable the printing of nanometer sized droplets with volumes in the femto and attoliter range and sub-micron droplet spacing, a nanoscale dispenser (NADIS) based on an atomic force microscopy probe has been developed and microfabricated. The probe consists of a cantilever with a hollow core, which is connected to a reservoir located in the chip. The hollow cantilever acts as a microfluidic c...

The fabrication and characterization of SiGeC cantilever microcoolers are described. Silicon on insulator (SOI) was used as the substrate, and two layers of 3 μm p-SiGe0.07C0.0075 and 1.14 μm n-SiGe0.07C0.0075 lattice matched to silicon were grown using molecular beam epitaxy. The uni couple cooler was fabricated using conventional integrated circuit (IC) processing, and the cantilever structur...

The nonlinear analysis of nanoelectromechanical systems using the differential quadrature model is investigated. The differential quadrature method is applied to overcome the difficulty of determining the nonlinear equation of motion. The characteristics of various combinations of curved electrodes and cantilever beams are considered to optimize the design. Various nano-actuators, such as the c...

Measurements over the past 30 years have indicated that surface stress can significantly affect the stiffness of microcantilever plates. Several one-dimensional models based on beam theory have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, but are found to be in violation of Newton's third law, in spite of their good agreement with measurements. In this Letter, we review this work and rigorously ex...

A design optimization based on genetic algorithms for increasing power output performance of MEMS piezoelectric cantilevered energy harvesters has been performed. By employing genetic algorithms, the piezoelectric energy scavenging system with optimized shape and lateral geometries of a unimorph cantilever beam and a proof mass is simulated to achieve a power response improvement of ~1.8× in co...