ON ELECTROSTATICALLY ACTUATED CNT BIO-SENSORS

摘要

This paper deals with electrostatically actuated Carbon NanoTubes (CNT) cantilevers for bio-sensing applications. There are three kinds of forces acting on the CNT cantilever: electrostatic, elastostatic, and van der Waals. The van der Waals forces are significant for values of 50 nm or lower of the gap between the CNT and the ground plate. As both forces electrostatic and van der Waals are nonlinear, and the CNT electrostatic actuation is given by AC voltage, the CNT dynamics is nonlinear parametric. The method of multiple scales is used to investigate the system under soft excitations and/or weakly nonlinearities. The frequency-amplitude and frequency-phase behavior are found in the case of primary resonance. The CNT bio-sensor is to be used for mass detection applications.