A radioisotope-powered, self-oscillating cantilever beam has been developed for small scale applications. A thin beam is placed within a short distance from a radioisotope source and as the charged particles from the source are collected on the beam, it is attracted towards the source. As it contacts the source, the beam is discharged and returns to it's initial position. The period of oscillat...

We present a micro-mechanical terahertz (THz) detector fabricated on silicon insulator (SOI) substrate and operating at room-temperature. The device is based U-shaped cantilever of micrometric size, top which two aluminum half-wave dipole antennas are deposited. This produces an absorption extending over the $\sim 2-3.5$THz frequency range. Due to different thermal expansion coefficients alumin...

We demonstrate a method to fabricate a high-aspect ratio metal tip attached to microfabricated cantilevers with controlled angle, length, and radius, for use in electrostatic force microscopy. A metal wire, after gluing it into a guiding slot that is cut into the cantilever, is shaped into a long, thin tip using a focused ion beam. The high-aspect ratio results in considerable reduction of the ...

We experimentally demonstrate a microelectromechanically reconfigurable ladder-shaped metamaterial (LS-MM) operating in terahertz (THz) range. Ultrasmall cantilever actuators with beam length of 14 μm are employed to independently reshape each unit cell the LS-MM, correspondingly switching transmission response THz waves. The driven LS-MM achieves tuning contrast 60.1% transmittance at 0.78 and...

The present study investigates Joule heating in piezoresistive microcantilever sensors. Joule heating and thermal deflections are a major source of noise in such sensors. This work uses analytical and numerical techniques to characterise the Joule heating in 4-layer piezoresistive microcantilevers made of silicon and silicon dioxide substrates but with the same U-shaped silicon piezoresistor. A...

Intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) have been observed in micromechanical cantilever arrays, and their creation, locking, interaction, and relaxation dynamics in the presence of a driver have been studied. The micromechanical array is fabricated in a 300 nm thick silicon-nitride film on a silicon substrate, and consists of up to 248 cantilevers of two alternating lengths. To observe the ILMs in th...