Microelectromechanical scanning probe instruments for array architectures

Abstract

Direct measurement of the absolute value of the interaction force between the fiber probe and the sample in a scanning near-field optical microscope Integrated atomic force microscopy array probe with metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor stress sensor, thermal bimorph actuator, and on-chip complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor electronics A compact (150 mϫ150 m), electrostatic actuator for out-of-plane (z) actuation of a probe tip has been designed, fabricated, and tested. Static deflections of Ϯ0.7 m out of the plane of the substrate have been achieved. The device consists of a single crystal silicon tip on a torsional cantilever with out-of-plane interdigitated electrode capacitors. This cantilever and electrode design allows a wide range of stiffnesses, actuator force, and frequency response. Significant improvements in performance ͑larger tip displacement and increased sense capacitance͒ and a higher density of devices per unit area can be obtained as the minimum feature size decreases. Applications such as information storage, molecular manipulation, and nanolithography require high density, parallel arrays for reasonable throughput. To demonstrate the suitability of this device for use in such arrays, a 12ϫ12 array of microelectromechanical probe tips with integrated actuators and capacitive sensors for scanning probe microscopy has been fabricated. The size of each array element is about 150 m by 150 m with a tip-to-tip spacing in the array of 200 m. Given these dimensions, the packing density of the devices is about 2500 units/cm 2 .

A single crystal silicon 3 dimensional processing technique with applications in large displacement electrostatic actuation

“…Several process technologies exist for the fabrication of high-aspect-ratio, single crystal silicon mechanical structures with more than one level (Albrecht et al, 1990;Tirole et al, 1993;Xu et al, 1995;Miller et al, 1997;Tirole et al, 1995). These processes usually involve SOI wafers, wafer bonding techniques or require self aligned levels (Hofmann et al, 1998).…”

“…Methods have been presented before for out of plane (Z directional) actuation (Albrecht et al, 1990;Tirole et al, 1993;Xu et al, 1995;Miller et al, 1997), but large displacements on the order of several microns have always been a problem due to the nature of the process and the actuation mechanism. This process produces high aspect ratio Z directional actuators with displacements of a few microns to several tens of microns.…”

Enhanced Nonlinear Dynamics for Accurate Identification of Stiffness Loss in a Thermo-Shielding Panel

“…Additionally, nonlinear systems are more sensitive to parametric changes than linear systems (especially in the neighborhood of bifurcations [27,63]). Nonlinear and chaotic vibrations have been observed in many physical contexts including airplane wings [15-17, 31, 59], panels forced by flow-induced loads [8-10, 21, 22, 44, 53, 54], rotors [28], pipes [46][47][48], heat exchangers [13,33,47,66], micro-systems [41,68] such as micro-plates, and thermo-shielding panels [22].…”

A review of parametric resonance in microelectromechanical systems

“…This device was developed for use as an on-chip-AFM/STM device, as described in [6]. For scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) or atomic force microscopy (ATM), a sharp tip is integrated onto a torsional cantilever, as shown in Fig.…”