Air flow actuation of micromechanical oscillators

Conventional techniques for the actuation and detection of micro- and nanoe lectromechanical structure resonant frequency involve rather inconvenient s tructure actuation or an extremely sensitive detection system. In an altern ate approach, we demonstrate a method to actuate micromachined low-stress s ilicon-oxide cantilevers by air flow. The output signal related to the ampl itude of oscillation was enhanced by more than three orders of magnitude in contrast to the amplitude gain due to the thermal noise response of the sy stem. The quality factor dependence with varying flow rate was also observe d. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.