Abstract
Driving a microcantilever externally may not be desirable in many sensor applications. Alternatively, it is possible to extract full spectral characteristics of the anharmonic thermal motion of a microcantilever naturally vibrating at ambient temperature. Present work aims at the detection of comparatively noise free higher resonance modes and harmonics of thermal vibration for sensor applications without externally induced vibration. In microcantilever sensor based experiments with optical detection of cantilever deflection, we demonstrate the problems associated with the conventional procedure of processing photodetector signal for resonating microcantilevers and describe improvements. It has been experimentally demonstrated that isolation of the dynamic component of a position sensitive photodetector signal from its static counterpart significantly improves the resolution and limit of detection of an instrument. Outputs from conventional and proposed methods have been compared with experiments performed in both ambient air and liquid environments. A very simple and cost-effective circuit design is presented.
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