Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MICROCANTILEVER SENSORS
Microcantilevers are the most simplified MEMS based devices. Microscopic
sensors spanning the width of a human hair were first developed by the researchers at the
US Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). These
hairlike, silicon-based devices are at least 1,000 times more sensitive and 1,000 times
smaller than currently used sensors. Each microsensor spans the width of a human hair.
Microcantilevers can be thought of as very small diving boards. Like a diving board
changes in the stresses on the board cause a microcantilever to bend. These detect and
measure relative humidity, temperature, pressure, flow, viscosity, sound, natural gas,
mercury vapor, ultraviolet and infrared radiation and DNA sequences and proteins. These
sensors have several advantages over the conventional analytical techniques in terms of
high sensitivity, low cost, simple procedure, low analyte requirement (in µl), non-
hazardous procedures and quick response.
They also have wide applications in the field of medicine, specifically for the
screening of diseases, blood glucose monitoring and detection of chemical and biological
warfare agents. Moreover, the technology has been developed in the last few years for the
fabrication and use of nanocantilevers for sensing applications, thereby giving rise to
nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). This development has increased the sensitivity
limit up to the extent that researchers can now visualize the counting of molecules. With
the ability of high throughput analysis of analytes and ultra sensitive detection, this
technology holds tremendous promise for the next generation of miniaturized and highly
sensitive sensors.
Introduction
Microcantilever would bend in a measurable way if its tip is coated with a material
that attracts another material from the air, for example, a gold-coated cantilever absorbs
mercury vapor, which stiffens the cantilever, causing it to bend and changing the way it
vibrates. A gelatin tip absorbs water, measuring humidity.
These sensors can also respond sensitively to heat. A silicon microcantilever coated
with aluminum bends more with rising temperature because aluminum expands more
than silicon. Such a device can measure temperature and even detect infrared radiation
and heat-generating chemical reactions.
When set in motion, microcantilevers have a natural vibration that changes in the
presence of sound waves or a fluid (enabling measurements of viscosity and pressure).
Figure 1. Different types of microcantilevers (top view) (a) Rectangular (b) Double-
legged (c) Triangular.
The capacitive method is based on the principle that when the cantilever deflection
takes place due to the adsorption of the analyte, the capacitance of a plane capacitor is
changed. Here the microcantilever is one of the two capacitor plates. This deflection
technique is highly sensitive and provides absolute displacement.
The Charge Coupled Device Detection Method
The position sensitive detector here is the CCD camera that records the laser beam
deflected from the cantilever.
Bending behaviour
Where E is the apparent Young’s modulus and I is the moment of inertia given by the
following equation for rectangular beams
bh 3
I=
12
The change in the surface stress at one side of the beam will cause static bending, and the
bending moment can be calculated as:
∆σ bh
M=
2
Δσ = σ1 – σ2 is the differential surface stress with σ1 and σ2 as surface stress at the upper
and lower side of the cantilever respectively Inserting these values of I and M in the first
equation yields Stoney’s formula:
6(1 - υ ) ∆σ
1/R =
Eh 2
Taking into account the boundary conditions of a cantilever (R » L), the above equation
can be solved and the displacement of the cantilevers can be written as:
3L2 (1 - υ ) ∆σ
s=
Eh 2
The commercial cantilevers are typically made of silicon, silicon nitride, or silicon
oxide and are available in a wide variety of different shapes, dimensions, and force
sensitivities. Recent developments combine the latest integrated circuit (IC) and
complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies to produce
intelligent extremely small cantilevers in the form of an array.
Applications of Microcantilevers
• BioSensing
• Drug Discovery
• Chemical Detection
• Thermal Detection
• Vibration monitors
• Infrared and UV radiation
Conclusion
Microcantilevers have got potential applications in every field of science ranging from
physical and chemical sensing to biological disease diagnosis. The major advantages of
employing microcantilevers as sensing mechanisms over the conventional sensors
include their high sensitivity, low cost, low analyte requirement (in µl), non-hazardous
procedure with fewer steps (obviating the need for labels), quick response and low power
requirement. Most important is the fact that an array of microcantilevers can be employed
for the diagnosis of large numbers of analytes such as various disease biomarkers of a
single disease in a single go thus having tremendous high throughput analysis
capabilities.