Thermal Excitation and Piezoresistive Detection of Cantilever In-Plane Resonance Modes for Sensing Applications

Thermally excited and piezoresistively detected bulk-micromachined cantilevers vibrating in their in-plane flexural resonance mode are presented. By shearing the surrounding fluid rather than exerting normal stress on it, the in-plane mode cantilevers exhibit reduced added fluid mass effects and improved quality factors in a fluid environment. In this letter, different cantilever geometries with in-plane resonance frequencies from 50 kHz to 2.2 MHz have been tested, with quality factors as high as 4200 in air and 67 in water.