Title:
Production and Analysis of Polymeric Microcantilever Parts

dc.contributor.advisor Colton, Jonathan S.
dc.contributor.author McFarland, Andrew W. en_US
dc.contributor.committeeMember Bottomley, Lawrence
dc.contributor.committeeMember Degertekin, F Levent
dc.contributor.committeeMember McDowell, David
dc.contributor.committeeMember Muzzy, John
dc.contributor.committeeMember Smith, Marc
dc.contributor.department Mechanical Engineering en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2005-03-01T19:40:02Z
dc.date.available 2005-03-01T19:40:02Z
dc.date.issued 2004-11-24 en_US
dc.description.abstract This dissertation presents work involving the manufacture and analytic modeling of microcantilever parts (length-width-thickness of roughly 500-100-10 microns). The manufacturing goals were to devise a means for and demonstrate repeatable production of microcantilevers from techniques not used in the integrated-circuit field, which are the exclusive means of current microcantilever production. The production of microcantilevers was achieved via a solvent casting approach and with injection molding, which produced parts from various thermoplastic polymeric materials (amorphous, semi-crystalline, fiber- and nanoclay-filled) in a repeatable fashion. Limits of the injection molding process in terms of the thinnest cantilevers possible were examined with 2 microns being the lower bound. Subsets of the injection-molded parts were used in a variety of sensing applications, some results were successful (e.g., vapor-phase, resonance- and deflection-based sensing), while others showed poor results, likely due to experimental shortcomings (e.g., fluid-phase, deflection-based sensing). Additionally, microcantilever parts with integrated tips were injection-molded and showed to function at the same level as commercial, tipped, silicon-nitride parts when imaging an optical grating; this experimental work was the first demonstration of injection-molded parts for chemical sensing and force spectroscopy. The scientific results were (i) the derivation of a length scale dependent bending stiffness and experimental evidence showing that such an effect was observed, (ii) the development of a new microcantilever experimental mode (surface stress monitoring via microcantilever bending resonant frequencies) and experimental validation of the technique, and (iii) a new method for determining microcantilever geometry based upon measurement of a bending, lateral, and torsional mode and experimental validation of the procedure. en_US
dc.description.degree Ph.D. en_US
dc.format.extent 10024923 bytes
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1853/4895
dc.language.iso en_US
dc.publisher Georgia Institute of Technology en_US
dc.subject MEMS en_US
dc.subject Microcantilever
dc.subject Micromolding
dc.subject.lcsh Plastics Molding en_US
dc.subject.lcsh Microelectromechanical systems Materials en_US
dc.subject.lcsh Injection molding of plastics en_US
dc.title Production and Analysis of Polymeric Microcantilever Parts en_US
dc.type Text
dc.type.genre Dissertation
dspace.entity.type Publication
local.contributor.advisor Colton, Jonathan S.
local.contributor.corporatename George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
local.contributor.corporatename College of Engineering
relation.isAdvisorOfPublication a1d2f2ce-a503-4dc2-a3bf-46e5c7ef4f40
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication c01ff908-c25f-439b-bf10-a074ed886bb7
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication 7c022d60-21d5-497c-b552-95e489a06569
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