Herein we describe the vibration of a thin nickel film-coated microcantilever at resonance under an external magnetic field. The resonance frequency and the mechanical loss—experimentally observed while varying the magnetic field—closely follow the field-dependence of the magnetostriction coefficient, indicating the strong coupling between the mechanical motion and the magnetostriction through the surface stress. Comparing to the surface stress model based on uniformly distributed axial load, the magnetostriction coefficient of a nickel film has been estimated, and its value is comparable to the reported one. Our study suggests that the nature of the surface stress originating from the magnetostrictive film can govern and modulate the resonant behavior of miniaturized mechanical systems.

We have fabricated porous miniaturized SiN resonators with various dimensions and studied their mechanical dynamics at their resonant modes. The surface modification of the resonators has been achieved by etching through a thin porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) mask, prepared by two-step anodization. Even though these porous resonators show well-defined Lorentzian line-shapes at their resonant modes, the corresponding fundamental flexural resonance frequencies are lower than those from typical non-porous resonators. The change in the resonance frequency is due to the presence of the pores on the surface, which reduces the effective tensile stress across the beam structure, as shown from both experimental measurements and the computational model. In addition, the observed quality factor reveals the level of dissipation originating from the surface modification. The principal dissipation mechanism is found to be gas damping in the free molecular flow regime. Based on the dissipation measurement, one can see an increase in the surface-to-mass ratio, which is responsible for the increased dissipation in the porous beam structure. The work presented here demonstrates simple integration of mechanical elements with a nanopatterning technique based on an AAO as well as the tuning of mechanics via surface modification at a small scale. Such a scheme could provide an additional degree of freedom in developing a mechanical sensing element with enhanced effective surface area.