Silicon microactuators capable of very long travel are described. The design is based on a laterally resonant cantilever, driven by an electrothermal shape bimorph located at the root. Performance characteristics are given for deep structures fabricated in bonded silicon-on-insulator material. Peak-to-peak displacements of more than 500 μm are obtained with cantilevers of 14 mm length, 30 μm wi...

This paper proposes a new non‐magnetic motor with a rotor rotated by using the resonance en‐ ergy of a bimorph cantilever beam excited by electrostatic force. The use of flexible material en‐ ables conversion of translational vibration to rotary movement in one direction. Basic character‐ istics of a prototype motor with two bimorph cantilever beams, such as rotational speed, output torque, and...

Surface stress measurements using atomic force microscopy ~AFM! require theoretical knowledge of the surface stress induced deformation of AFM cantilever plates. In a companion paper @J. E. Sader, J. Appl. Phys. 89, 2911 ~2001!#, a detailed theoretical study of the effects of homogeneous surface stress on rectangular AFM cantilever plates was presented. Since cantilevers of both rectangular and...

We consider piezoelectric flow energy harvesting in an internal flow environment with the ultimate goal powering systems such as sensors in deep oil well applications. Fluid motion is coupled to structural vibration via a cantilever beam placed in a converging-diverging flow channel. Two designs were considered for the electromechanical coupling: first; the cantilever itself is a piezoelectric ...

Due to its simplicity, the parallel beam approximation (PBA) is commonly used in the analytical evaluation of the spring constant of V-shaped atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilevers. However, the point of contention regarding the validity of the PBA is as yet an unresolved issue, which has been exacerbated by some recent contradictory reports. In this paper, we present a detailed investigatio...

This paper reports on the fabrication and characterisation of self-actuating, and selfsensing cantilever arrays for large-scale parallel surface scanning. Each cantilever is integrated with a sharp silicon tip, a thermal-driven bimorph actuator, and a piezoresistive deflection sensor. Thus, the tip to the sample distance can be controlled individually for each cantilever. A radius of the tips b...

A device composed of a piezoelectric bimorph cantilever and a water electrolysis device was fabricated to realize piezoelectrochemical hydrogen production. The obvious output of the hydrogen and oxygen through application of a mechanical vibration of ~0.07 N and ~46.2 Hz was observed. This method provides a cost-effective, recyclable, environment-friendly and simple way to directly split water ...

Micro- and nanocantilevers are increasingly employed as mass sensors. Most studies consider the first flexural mode and adsorbed masses that are either discretely attached or homogeneously distributed along the entire length of the cantilever. We derive general expressions that allow for the determination of the total attached mass with any mass distribution along the cantilever length and all ...