Self-excited coupled-microcantilevers for mass sensing

Abstract

This paper reports ultrasensitive mass detection based on the relative change in the amplitude ratio of the first mode oscillation using self-excited coupled microcantilevers. The method proposed and demonstrated using the macrocantilevers in the previous study can measure eigenstate shifts caused by objects with high accuracy without being affected by the viscous damping effect of measurement environments. In this study, moving towards the use of this method for small mass measurements, we established the self-excited coupled microcantilevers and we have achieved in measurements of very small mass (about 1 ng) with 1% order of error.