Su, Yi (1997) Micromachined piezoresistive single crystal silicon cantilever sensors. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Abstract
Micromachined piezoresistive silicon cantilever sensors have been designed, fabricated and analyzed for force sensing applications. The V or A-shaped cantilevers each with an integrated sharp tip at the free end are designed for AFM application while the cantilever paddles are designed for flow sensing.
The theoretical characteristic of the piezoresistive silicon cantilever sensors are presented, including force constant, mechanical resonant frequencies, the piezoresistive readout against the end deflection of the cantilevers and the piezoresistive readout versus an airflow velocity in flow sensing application. Force constant formulae are presented for a tapered V-AFM cantilever and a cantilever paddle in zeroth-order approximation. Mechanical resonant frequencies of both cantilevers are simulated by Rayleigh-Ritz method and Finite Element modelling. Piezoresistive readout formulae of both cantilever sensors are also presented. The experimental resonant frequencies and the piezoresistive readout results agree reasonably well with the theoretical predictions.
The cantilever paddles have been applied to measure airflow velocity down to several cm/s. The AFM cantilevers have been applied to a commercial AFM machine for optical lever and piezoresistive readout. The imaged topographic quality shows that our silicon AFM tip is sharper than the commercial silicon AFM tip. Preliminary piezoresistive images show that the piezoresistive AFM is promising.
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