A new bimaterial microcantilever with tunable thermomechanical response

In this paper, a new structural design is proposed which allows the tuning of the thermomechanical response of a bimaterial microcantilever. Through altering its cross section, it is shown that the bimaterial microcantilever can be tailored to either bend up or down when temperature increases, with tunable thermomechanical response. To prove the new design concept, various gold–polysilicon test specimens with capacitance readout system were fabricated using the PolyMUMPs® foundry process. Thermal loading experiments performed on these devices show good agreement with analytical modeling and finite element simulations. The new design concept is then used to show how the problem of sensitivity to temperature in gold–polysilicon bimaterial microcantilevers can be minimized for temperatures up to 100 °C.

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► A new design for bimaterial microcantilevers with tunable response is proposed.
► Microcantilever response can be reversed without changing fabrication process.
► A temperature-independent microcantilever design is proposed and investigated.