The cantilever is a prototype of a highly compliant mechanical system and has an instrumental role in nanotechnology, enabling surface microscopy, and ultrasensitive force and mass measurements. Here we report fluctuation-induced transitions between two stable states of a strongly driven microcantilever. Geometric nonlinearity gives rise to an amplitude-dependent resonance frequency and bifurcation occurs beyond a critical point. The cantilever response to a weak parametric modulation is amplified by white noise, resulting in an optimum signal-to-noise ratio at finite noise intensity. This stochastic switching suggests new detection schemes for cantilever-based instrumentation, where the detection of weak signals is mediated by the fluctuating environment. For ultrafloppy, cantilevers with nanometer-scale dimensions operating at room temperature—a new transduction paradigm emerges that is based on probability distributions and mimics nature.

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Stochastic switching of cantilever motion, W.J. Venstra, H.J.R. Westra, H.S.J. van der Zant, Nature Communications  4 | Article number:  2624 | doi:10.1038/ncomms3624 | Published 31 October 2013.

This work is funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement no. 318287, project LANDAUER.