Investigation of loading and force sensing properties of a probe-type microforce sensor with force-distance curves

In this paper, the force-distance curves have been employed to investigate the force sensing properties of the probe-type microforce sensors. In the preliminary studies, two kinds of probe-type microforce sensors have been used to load the objects with dry and wetted surfaces. One is a developed piezoresistive cantilever force sensor with sensitivity of 35 μN/V and the other an atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever beam probe with sensitivity of 10.4 nN/V. The force outputs corresponding to the regimes of approaching, indenting, and loading are obtained, and the properties of the stability in the approaching regime of the sensors, local mechanical behavior of the tested objects in the indenting regime, and the force sensing of the global samples are analyzed. Experimental results of this analysis are also presented.