Fabrication and Sensing Behavior of Piezoelectric Microcantilever for Nanobalance

Abstract

The fabrication and analysis of a cantilever microtransducer were performed for a mass-detecting device. We designed piezoelectric microcantilever arrays with various lengths and shapes to investigate their resonance properties and sensitivity. Finite element method (FEM) simulation was carried out to estimate the resonant property of the microcantilever. A multilayered piezoelectric microcantilever has been successfully fabricated using micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) processing. The microcantilever employs a sol-gel derived Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 (PZT) capacitor fabricated on a low-stress SiNx layer. The microcantilever showed a natural resonant frequency of 16–26 kHz. The microcantilever exhibited a mass sensitivity of 34.1 Hz/ng, which enables its application to nanobalance, i.e., to detect biomolecules or gas molecules in a nanogram regime.