A Versatile Mass-Sensing Platform With Tunable Nonlinear Self-Excited Microcantilevers



Mouro, Joao, Tiribilli, Bruno and Paoletti, Paolo ORCID: 0000-0001-6131-0377
(2018) A Versatile Mass-Sensing Platform With Tunable Nonlinear Self-Excited Microcantilevers. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOTECHNOLOGY, 17 (4). pp. 751-762.

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Abstract

A versatile mass-sensing platform based on the nonlinear dynamical response of a microcantilever embedded in a self-excitation feedback loop is proposed. It is experimentally shown that the delay imposed in the feedback loop by an adjustable phase-shifter can be used to finely tune this system to work in three different modalities, according to the desired mass sensing application: 1) as a continuous mass sensor, where the oscillation frequency smoothly responds to changes in the mass added to the resonator; 2) as a threshold sensor, where a sudden change in the oscillation frequency is triggered by an arbitrarily small change of mass added to the cantilever; and 3) as a stable microresonator, whose oscillation frequency is almost not affected by environmental conditions, such as changes in added mass, or in density/viscosity of the surrounding fluid. This variety of dynamical responses was registered for a wide range of added masses, in the form of beads individually attached to the cantilever. A complete analytical model to explain the observed experimental results is derived and shows a strong agreement with the measured data. The high resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, as well as the threshold and stable sensing modalities obtained with this closed-loop technique, are not available in the current open-loop microcantilever-based mass sensors.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Mass-sensing, nonlinear oscillations, self-excited microcantilever
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 09 May 2018 08:46
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 06:34
DOI: 10.1109/TNANO.2018.2829404
Open Access URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8352046/#
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URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3021103