Flexural sensitivity and resonance of cantilever micro-sensors based on nonlocal elasticity theory

Sensors based on microcantilevers, especially ones with uniform structure, have ultrahigh sensitivities. The normalized natural frequencies and the sensitivity of lateral vibration of an elastic microcantilever sensor in contact with a surface are derived analytically based on the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory by taking into account the small scale effect. The interaction of the sensor with the surface is modeled by linear springs, which restricts the results to experiments involving low-amplitude excitations. The results show that the normalized natural frequencies of nonlocal microcantilever are smaller than those for its local counterpart, especially for higher values of small scale parameters. Also, each mode has a different sensitivity to variations in surface stiffness. Moreover, the most sensitivity is observed at the first mode of vibration. When the nonlocal effect is not taken into account, the natural frequencies and the sensitivity of the microcantilever in contact with the surface are compared with those obtained in previous study without considering the nonlocal effect.