Design optimization of piezoresistive cantilevers for force sensing in air and water
- 15 September 2009
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Journal of Applied Physics
- Vol. 106 (6), 064310
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3224965
Abstract
Piezoresistive cantilevers fabricated from doped silicon or metal films are commonly used for force, topography, and chemical sensing at the micro- and macroscales. Proper design is required to optimize the achievable resolution by maximizing sensitivity while simultaneously minimizing the integrated noise over the bandwidth of interest. Existing analytical design methods are insufficient for modeling complex dopant profiles, design constraints, and nonlinear phenomena such as damping in fluid. Here we present an optimization method based on an analytical piezoresistive cantilever model. We use an existing iterative optimizer to minimimize a performance goal, such as minimum detectable force. The design tool is available as open source software. Optimal cantilever design and performance are found to strongly depend on the measurement bandwidth and the constraints applied. We discuss results for silicon piezoresistors fabricated by epitaxy and diffusion, but the method can be applied to any dopant profile or material which can be modeled in a similar fashion or extended to other microelectromechanical systems.Keywords
This publication has 35 references indexed in Scilit:
- Review: Semiconductor Piezoresistance for MicrosystemsProceedings of the IEEE, 2009
- Modeling Piezoresistive Microcantilever Sensor Response to Surface Stress for Biochemical SensorsIEEE Sensors Journal, 2008
- Crystalline silicon cantilevers for piezoresistive detection of biomolecular forcesMicroelectronic Engineering, 2008
- Analysis of nematode mechanics by piezoresistive displacement clampProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007
- 5 MHz, 2 N/m piezoresistive cantilevers with INCISIVE tipsPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2002
- Smart single-chip gas sensor microsystemNature, 2001
- 1/f noise considerations for the design and process optimization of piezoresistive cantileversJournal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 2000
- Centimeter scale atomic force microscope imaging and lithographyApplied Physics Letters, 1998
- Atomic resolution with an atomic force microscope using piezoresistive detectionApplied Physics Letters, 1993
- Atomic Force MicroscopePhysical Review Letters, 1986