among the intermolecular interactions, the casimir and van der waals forces are the most important forces that highly affect the behavior of nanostructures. this paper studies the effect of such forces on the adhesion of cantilever freestanding nanostructures. the nanostructures are made of a freestanding nano-beam which is suspended between two upper and lower conductive surfaces. the linear s...

The concept of “energy harvesting” is to design smart systems to capture the ambient energy and to convert it to usable electrical power for supplying small electronics devices and sensors. The goal is to develop autonomous and self-powered devices that do not need any replacement of traditional electrochemical batteries. Now piezoelectric cantilever structures are being used to harvest vibrati...

In this paper, the stability of a functionally graded magneto-electro-elastic (FG-MEE) micro-beam under actuation of electrostatic pressure is studied. For this purpose Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and constitutive relations for magneto-electro-elastic (MEE) materials have been used. We have supposed that material properties vary exponentially along the thickness direction of the micro-beam. Gov...

Interferometric displacement detection in a cantilever-based non-contact atomic force microscope (NC-AFM) operated in ultra-high vacuum is demonstrated for the Michelson and Fabry-Pérot modes of operation. Each mode is addressed by appropriately adjusting the distance between the fiber end delivering and collecting light and a highly reflective micro-cantilever, both together forming the interf...

A micro power generator for harvesting vibration energy by means of a piezoelectric laminated cantilever with inertial mass was designed, fabricated, and characterized. The device was micro machined from a silicon-on-insulator structure coated with a 2μm thick piezoelectric PZT thin film. Interdigitated electrodes (IDE) were applied to achieve higher voltages. A piezoelectric coupling constant ...

To date, commercial atomic force microscopes have been optimized for measurements of forces perpendicular to the sample surface. In many applications, sensitive parallel force measurements are desirable. These can be obtained by positioning the cantilever with its long axis perpendicular to the sample: the so-called pendulum geometry. We present a compact optical beam deflection system which so...

Micro-cantilevers are frequently used as scanning probes and sensors in micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). Usually micro-cantilever based sensors operate by detecting changes in cantilever vibration modes (e.g., bending or torsional vibration frequency) or surface stresses when a target analyte is adsorbed on the surface. The catalyst for chemical reactions (i.e., for a specific analyte) c...

Micro-cantilevers are now gaining popularity in biomolecular sensing. Monitoring and mass detection of biological species can be accurately determined using the microor nanoscale cantilevers. The targeted biological molecules are first immobilized onto the microcantilever which is later determined through static or dynamic techniques. Optical detection method is employed to determine the deflec...

This paper presents a micro-fabricated flexible and curled PZT [Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3] cantilever using d33 piezoelectric mode for vibration based energy harvesting applications. The proposed cantilever based energy harvester consists of polyimide, PZT thin film, and inter-digitated IrOx electrodes. The flexible cantilever was formed using bulk-micromachining on a silicon wafer to integrate it wit...

The movement of a micro cantilever was detected via a self constructed portable data acquisition prototype system which integrates a linear array of 32 1D amorphous silicon position sensitive detectors (PSD). The system was mounted on a microscope using a metal structure platform and the movement of the 30 μm wide by 400 μm long cantilever was tracked by analyzing the signals acquired by the 32...