Vibration response of a piezoelectrically actuated microcantilever subjected to tipsample interaction

Piezoelectric microcantilevers (mcs) are types of mcs which can be used in atomic forcemicroscopy (afm) as a micro-robot, sensor, and imaging actuator. in this paper, the vibrating motion ofpiezoelectric mcs in afm application is analyzed. with respect to the geometrical discontinuities, dueto the piezoelectric layer, as well as tip, a non-uniform beam model is chosen for analysis. at first, todetermine the accuracy of the non-uniform beam model in simulating the vibrating motion of piezoelectricmc, the simulation results are compared with the experimental ones in the absence of the tip-sampleforce. good agreement of these results indicates the ability of this model in modeling this type of mc. anumerical solution and a multiple time scale (mts) method are used to study the nonlinear response ofthe mc near the sample surface. comparison of results, at the non-contact mode, shows good agreementbetween the two solving methods at normal equilibrium distances (d  2 nm). the effects of the angle ofmc, the probe length, and the geometric dimensions of the piezoelectric layer on the nonlinearity of thesystem are studied and it then becomes clear that they can affect the frequency response curvature of thecurve and the nonlinearity of the system.