We fabricated a triaxial force measurement cantilever with piezoresistors fabricated by sidewall-doping. The device is developed as a tool for applying quantitative mechanical stimuli to cells and measuring their mechanical properties. The device has three piezoresistors, one was on the surface of for measuring forces in z direction, and the other two were on the sidewall of the beams, for x and y direction. The displacement sensitivities in x, y, and z direction were 1.59×10-3 μm-1, 1.18×10-3 μm-1, and 3.26×10-4 μm-1, respectively. We confirmed that our cantilever was capable of measuring triaxial force and had a good linear characteristic.

References :
Yuichiro Aoyama, Nguyen Binh-Khiem, Kentaro Noda, Yusuke Takei, Tetsuo Kan, Eiji Iwase, Kiyoshi Matsumoto and Isao Shimoyama, “Triaxial Force Measurement Cantilever by Sidewall-Doping with Rapid Thermal Diffusion ,”IEEE 23rd International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS '10), pp. 619-622, Hong Kong, China, Jan. 25-28, 2010． [Proceedings]