Microfabricated cantilever-based detector for molecular beam experiments

A low cost detector for particles in molecular beam experiments is presented which can easily be mounted in a molecular beam apparatus. The detector is based on microfabricated cantilevers, which can be employed either as single sensors or as sensor arrays. The single cantilever technique has been used to measure the absolute number of atoms coming out of a pulsed laser vaporization cluster source. The particles are detected by the shift of the thermally excited resonance frequency of the cantilever due to the cluster deposition. We have determined with the single cantilever the ratio of neutral to ionized clusters and we have investigated the cluster generation at different source conditions. In addition to this, a microfabricated cantilever array has been used to measure molecular beam profiles, which opens new possibilities for molecular beam deflection experiments.