Influence of adsorption-desorption process on resonant frequency and noise of micro- and nanocantilevers

Scientists in the field of NEMS today are focused on the problem of achieving the lowest detectable mass of the atomic force microscope and molecular microscope probes. This paper deals with this problem starting from the theory of the adsorption-desorption noise and also the noise caused by temperature fluctuations and Johnson´s noise. We found that the adsorption-desorption noise clearly exceeds the noise of the other sources at lower frequencies. According to the results we obtained for a typical microcantilever fabricated by NEMS processes, the order of magnitude of the noise equivalent mass (NEM) is NEM/spl sim/10/sup 4/ D (1 D=1.7/spl middot/10/sup -27/ kg).