title: Fabrication of single and coupled metallic nanocantilevers and their nanomechanical response at resonance.
abstract: We fabricate and explore the resonance characteristics of self-supporting thin film based metallic nanocantilever systems. Nanocantilevers of Au and Ag are fabricated from self-supporting (polycrystalline) thin films (∼100 nm) grown via a surfactant mediated process. Focused ion beam assisted milling and manipulation techniques are used to fabricate the nanocantilevers. The resonance characteristics of the cantilevers are investigated by the piezoelectric base excitation method and the frequencies of their first resonance modes are determined by digitally processing and analysing scanning electron microscopy images captured during the study. The resonance characteristics of the nanocantilevers are observed to deviate from the Euler-Bernoulli description. We suggest a polynomial expression to describe the peculiar dimensional dependence of resonance frequency of a mechanically vibrating nanocantilever, where the zeroth order term in the polynomial expression represents an Euler-Bernoulli like form. We also demonstrate a fabrication and measurement technique for an elastically coupled Au nanocantilever system and analysis of its vibration characteristics by means of an analogous mass-spring system.
authors: Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, UP, 208016, India.
authors: Amit
authors: A
authors: Banerjee
authors: S S
authors: SS
authors: Banerjee