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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 13, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2013

Cantilever Resonator With Integrated Actuation and Sensing

Fabricated Using a Single Step Lithography
S. M. Mohanasundaram, Rudra Pratap, and Arindam Ghosh
Abstract Micro- and nano-mechanical resonators have been
proposed for a variety of applications ranging from mass sensing
to signal processing. Often their actuation and/or detection
involve external subsystems that are much larger than the
resonator itself. We have designed a simple microcantilever
resonator with integrated sensor and actuator, facilitating the
integration of large arrays of resonators. This unique design can
be manufactured with a low-cost fabrication process, involving
just a single step of lithography. The bilayer cantilever of gold
and silicon dioxide is used as piezoresistive sensor as well as
thermal bimorph actuator. The ac current used for actuation and
the dc current used for piezoresistive detection are separated in
the frequency-domain using a bias-tee circuit configuration. The
resonant response is measured by detecting the second harmonic
of the actuation current using a lock-in amplifier.
Index Terms Microelectromechanical
onators, nanotechnology, piezoresistance.

devices,

microres-

I. I NTRODUCTION

ANTILEVERS are demonstrably one of the most

versatile sensing elements in nanotechnology. Cantilever
based sensors are being developed for myriad of applications,
including scanning probe microscopy, biomolecular sensing,
high density data storage, mass spectroscopy, etc. In many of
these applications, the cantilevers are operated in resonance
to exploit the high sensitivity of these oscillators to external
stimuli. Nanomechanical resonators operating at very high
frequencies have spawned a new class of high performance
sensors [1].
Traditionally, cantilever motion has been detected using
optical techniques such as laser beam deflection and interferometry. Since these off-chip readout methods require precise
alignment with rather bulky instrumentation, self-sensing cantilevers gained importance from a technological standpoint.
Self-sensing cantilevers mainly use piezoresistive or piezoelectric transduction. Such resonators are typically actuated
using external electric or magnetic fields apart from being
mounted on a platform that can be vibrated at the required
frequencies. It is highly desirable to have both actuation and

Manuscript received June 6, 2012; revised October 9, 2012; accepted

October 11, 2012. Date of publication October 16, 2012; date of current
version January 11, 2013. This work was supported by the Department
of Science and Technology, Government of India. The associate editor
coordinating the review of this letter and approving it for publication was
Prof. Sang-Seok Lee.
S. M. Mohanasundaram and A. Ghosh are with the Department of Physics,
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India (e-mail: contactmohan@
gmail.com; arindam@physics.iisc.ernet.in).
R. Pratap is with the Center for Nano Science and Engineering,
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India (e-mail: pratap@
mecheng.iisc.ernet.in).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2012.2225045

sensing mechanism integrated into the cantilever, because that

will open up a whole new range of applications, where no constraints are placed on the environment in which the sensor can
operate. Self-sensing and self-actuating cantilevers also enable
the possibility of integrating a large array of these sensors in
many applications that can benefit from multiplexing.
Cantilevers with integrated actuation and sensing have been
realized using piezoelectric materials such as PZT (Lead
Zirconate Titanate) [2]. But such functional materials are not
compatible with standard MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical
System) or CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) foundry. An alternative is to integrate thermal actuators
onto piezoresistive cantilevers [3]. Silicon microcantilevers
with thermal actuators and doped-silicon piezoresistors have
been successfully demonstrated in applications [4], [5]. But
these devices are fabricated using a long sequence of sophisticated processing steps such as ion implantation and involving
up to six lithography steps [6], which makes these devices
quite expensive to manufacture. Pourkamali, et. al. have developed a silicon resonator [7] that is fabricated with a single step
lithography. The realized device is an in-plane resonator with
a single structure that is both an actuator and a sensor.
In this letter, we present a cantilever design that vibrates
out-of-plane in the flexural mode and can be fabricated with a
single step lithography. Unlike the cantilever designs reported
so far, where the actuator and sensor are electrically isolated
by physical separation, the actuator and sensor in our design
are electrically connected, yet are operated independently.
We achieve this by separating the electrical signals used for
actuation and sensing in the frequency domain with the help
of the measurement circuit that we have developed to detect
the cantilever oscillation.
The simplicity of fabrication originates from our choice
to use a simple metal (gold) as the active material instead
of the commonly used doped silicon. A thin layer of gold
film deposited on to an insulating structural layer can act
as a piezoresistive sensor as well as a thermal bimorph
actuator. In fact, a metal film piezoresistor can provide much
better signal-to-noise ratio than semiconductor piezoresistor at
nanoscale [1] due to low resistivity and high carrier density
of the former. Taking full advantage of this fact, our design,
which includes an actuator as well, is scalable to much lower
dimensions than what we present here.
II. E XPERIMENT
A. Device Fabrication
We start with a silicon (100) wafer and grow the silicon
dioxide structural layer of required thickness (300 nm for the
device shown) using thermal wet oxidation method at 1100 C.
The cantilever is patterned using electron-beam lithography

1530437X/$31.00 2012 IEEE

MOHANASUNDARAM et al.: CANTILEVER RESONATOR WITH INTEGRATED ACTUATOR AND SENSOR

441

(a)

(b)

Fig. 1.

Fabrication process flow.

and SiO2 etching in buffered hydrofluoric acid. The SiO2

structure is released by silicon bulk micromachining using
tetramethyl ammonium hydroxide. Subsequently, a 50 nm gold
film with a 15 nm titanium adhesion layer is deposited by
thermal evaporation. The fabrication process steps are pictorially represented in Fig. 1. Notice that there is always some
undercut after bulk micromachining which ensures the gold
film in the trench is disconnected from the device and contacts.
B. Cantilever Design
The cantilever consists of a suspended body and three legs
each of which is anchored to the substrate. The middle leg is
meant to be the sensing leg with a piezoresistive strain gauge.
Of the outer legs, one is used for sourcing the actuation current
and the other is a common ground for both actuation and
sensing currents. There is a notch in the middle leg, that serves
two purposes. First, it serves as a stress concentrator when the
cantilever oscillates. Second, it increases the resistance of the
middle leg relative to the other legs, thus increasing the voltage
drop across the same due to the bias current. It is fair to say
that it the notch region that primarily acts as the strain gauge.
An SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image of one of the
cantilevers just after fabrication is shown in Fig. 2(b).
C. Measurement
A schematic diagram of the measurement setup is shown in
Fig. 2(a). The circuit primarily comprises a bias-tee configuration in which an inductor is used to block ac current and a
capacitor is used to block dc current. We use an ac voltage
source at frequency f /2 to oscillate the cantilever at f as
thermal actuation (due to Joule heating) doubles the frequency.
This ac actuation current is prevented from flowing into the
middle leg (strain gauge) by the inductor L. So the actuation
current is restricted to flow along the outer legs as represented
by a dashed arrow in Fig. 2(a).
The cantilever oscillations generate a sinusoidal strain, thus
resulting in a sinusoidal change in the resistance of the strain
gauge. To measure this resistance change a dc bias current
is passed through the inductor to the common ground as
represented by a solid arrow in Fig. 2(a). The dc bias current is
prevented from flowing into the actuation source by the capacitor C. Due to the bias current a sinusoidal voltage at frequency
f develops at the contact of the middle leg. This signal is measured by phase sensitive detection using a lock-in amplifier.
The actuation frequency is varied across the fundamental
resonance frequency to obtain the frequency response shown
in Fig. 2(c). The circuit parameters used in the measurement

(c)

(d)

Fig. 2.
(a) Schematic diagram of the device structure along with the
measurement setup. (b) SEM image of a fabricated device. (c) Piezoresistively
detected frequency response of the cantilever. (d) Frequency response after
subtracting the background.

are: C = 86 nF, Ra = Rb = 1 k, L = 0.93 mH,

Vac = 1 Vrms , Vbias = 2 V and the strain gauge resistance is
17 . This measurement is done under ambient conditions
and quality factor (Q) of the resonator is 22. Q can
be improved by appropriate engineering including vacuum
packaging, increasing the SiO2 thickness or by using a better
structural material such as silicon nitride, silicon carbide, etc.
The change in output voltage V0 plotted as a function of
actuation frequency [Fig. 2(d)] is obtained after subtracting a
polynomial-fit background curve [dashed curve in Fig. 2(c)].
The background voltage is due to interference that originates
mainly from the thermal cross-talk. Thermal cross-talk is
the signal generated due to the temperature oscillations in
the grounded outer leg which is in series with the strain
gauge. Harmonic distortion from the actuation source can also
contribute to the background voltage. The background voltage
can be easily distinguished and eliminated (as we have done)
because it varies much more slowly with frequency. Thus, the
resonator fabricated using the simple process described in this
letter incorporates both actuation and sensing successfully.
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