Characterization of microcantilevers solely by frequency response acquisition

A method is presented to determine the geometry of tipless microcantilevers by measuring the resonance frequencies of at least one of their bending, lateral and torsional resonance modes, and having knowledge of the beam’s elastic modulus, Poisson’s ratio and density. Once the geometry is known, the beam’s stiffness and mass can be calculated. Measurement of multiple modes allows for multiple estimates of cantilever geometry. Multiple data points from the experimental results show that this approach yields dimensional values accurate to roughly 2.5% as compared to SEM-determined length, width and thickness. Stiffness values determined with this new technique are roughly 4.7% and 6.5% less than two existing characterization methods (i.e., Sader’s method and Euler–Bernoulli beam theory predictions), and roughly 16% greater than Hutter and Bechhoefer’s stiffness determination method.