Micro Cantilever Movement Detection with an Amorphous Silicon Array of Position Sensitive Detectors

• Main Authors: Isabel Ferreira, Rafal Wierzbicki, Holger Heerlein, Rodrigo Martins, Elvira Fortunato, Sonia Pereira, Daniel Costa, Javier Contreras
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2010-09-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: amorphous semiconductors; silicon; devices; systems
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/10/9/8173/

The movement of a micro cantilever was detected via a self constructed portable data acquisition prototype system which integrates a linear array of 32 1D amorphous silicon position sensitive detectors (PSD). The system was mounted on a microscope using a metal structure platform and the movement of the 30  µm wide by 400  µm long cantilever was tracked by analyzing the signals acquired by the 32 sensor array electronic readout system and the relevant data algorithm. The obtained results show a linear behavior of the photocurrent relating X and Y movement, with a non-linearity of about 3%, a spatial resolution of less than 2 ��m along the lateral dimension of the sensor as well as of less than 3 µm along the perpendicular dimension of the sensor, when detecting just the micro-cantilever, and a spatial resolution of less than 1 µm when detecting the holding structure.