Thermoplastic microcantilevers fabricated by nanoimprint lithography

Nanoimprint lithography has been exploited to fabricate micrometre-sized cantilevers in thermoplastic. This technique allows for very well defined microcantilevers and gives the possibility of embedding structures into the cantilever surface. The microcantilevers are fabricated in TOPAS and are up to 500 mu m long, 100 mu m wide, and 4.5 mu m thick. Some of the cantilevers have built-in ripple surface structures with heights of 800 nm and pitches of 4 mu m. The yield for the cantilever fabrication is 95% and the initial out-of-plane bending is below 10 mu m. The stiffness of the cantilevers is measured by deflecting the cantilever with a well-characterized AFM probe. An average stiffness of 61.3 mN m(-1) is found. Preliminary tests with water vapour indicate that the microcantilevers can be used directly for vapour sensing applications and illustrate the influence of surface structuring of the cantilevers.