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Title: Expanded beam deflection method for simultaneous measurement of displacement and vibrations of multiple microcantilevers

Journal Article · · Review of Scientific Instruments
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3652977· OSTI ID:22063738
; ; ;  [1]; ; ;  [2]
  1. Faculty of Microsystem Electronics and Photonics, Wroclaw University of Technology, Janiszewskiego 11/17, Wroclaw 50-372 (Poland)
  2. Division of Silicon Microsystem and Nanostructure Technology, Institute of Electron Technology, Lotnikow 32/46, Warsaw 02-668 (Poland)

Here we present an extension of optical beam deflection (OBD) method for measuring displacement and vibrations of an array of microcantilevers. Instead of focusing on the cantilever, the optical beam is either focused above or below the cantilever array, or focused only in the axis parallel to the cantilevers length, allowing a wide optical line to span multiple cantilevers in the array. Each cantilever reflects a part of the incident beam, which is then directed onto a photodiode array detector in a manner allowing distinguishing between individual beams. Each part of reflected beam behaves like a single beam of roughly the same divergence angle in the bending sensing axis as the incident beam. Since sensitivity of the OBD method depends on the divergence angle of deflected beam, high sensitivity is preserved in proposed expanded beam deflection (EBD) method. At the detector, each spot's position is measured at the same time, without time multiplexing of light sources. This provides real simultaneous readout of entire array, unavailable in most of competitive methods, and thus increases time resolution of the measurement. Expanded beam can also span another line of cantilevers allowing monitoring of specially designed two-dimensional arrays. In this paper, we present first results of application of EBD method to cantilever sensors. We show how thermal noise resolution can be easily achieved and combined with thermal noise based resonance frequency measurement.

OSTI ID:
22063738
Journal Information:
Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 82, Issue 10; Other Information: (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0034-6748
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English