Thermomechanical behavior of a bimaterial microchannel cantilever subjected to periodic IR radiation

[Display omitted] •Fabricated temperature responsive bimaterial microchannel cantilevers (BMC) for PCDS.•Thermomechanical response of the BMC to external heating and heating through pulsed IR have been elucidated to find thermomechanical sensitivity and power sensitivity.•A minimum measurement of 60μW of power, an energy resolution of∼240nJ and a temperature resolution of 4mK are reported.•Molecular detection of a minimum of 1.15ng ethanol are reported.•Figures of merit are calculated considering as a thermal sensor. Here we report the thermomechanical response of a bimaterial microchannel cantilever (BMC) subjected to periodic heating by IR radiation. A detailed theoretical and experimental study was performed considering the BMC as a thermal sensor. Experiments were conducted to find out the thermal sensitivity and power sensitivity of various BMC designs. The thermal sensitivity of the BMC was found by monitoring the response of the BMC to external heating while the power sensitivity was measured by observing its behavior to varying incident IR power. We report a minimum measurement of 60μW of power, an energy resolution of∼240nJ and a temperature resolution of 4mK using the BMC. The optimum BMC design was chosen to demonstrate a spectroscopy application to detect a minimum of 1.15ng of ethanol in ethanol-water binary mixture. The purpose of this paper is to add molecular selectivity to the ultra-sensitive, novel design of microchannel cantilevers using photothermal spectroscopy techniques for biosensing applications.