Simulation and Design Optimization of Polymeric Micro-Structures based Bio-Sensors

Suspended polymeric microstructures in the form of microcantilevers and microbeams have seen enormous flux of usage in physical, chemical and biological sensing. Present work investigates more about miniaturized PDMS elastomeric microbeams which can overcome the drawback of conventional rigid silicon based micro-sensors. Static and dynamic methods of analysis for the as-fabricated structures in the lab have been investigated in the present study using COMSOL Multiphysics® 5.3 software to give a better insight about its sensitivity. The study was compared with that of conventional polysilicon microbeams of similar dimensions also and proved to be less effective that polymeric ones. Further, the static and dynamic analysis of the microbeams revealed that the sensors were capable of detecting a minimum mass of almost 70 $\mu$ g and 50 pg respectively, suggesting that the dynamic analysis provided sensitivity than static method.