Influence of non-ideal clamping in microcantilever resonant frequency estimation

Among the most promising sensing platforms are resonating microcantilevers due to their high sensitivity and wide application range. A key parameter of the device implementation is the predicted value of the resonant frequency that depends on the modeling and considerations of relevant physical phenomena. In fact, the estimation based on the conventional, perfectly clamped, Bernoulli-Euler cantilever beam does not lead to satisfactory accuracy in certain cases. Hence this work investigates two system characteristics that may affect the re sonant frequency (a support effect and a so-called rim effect) and provides solutions for a straightforward estimation of rim dimension using resonance behavior of the cantilevers.