Magnetic Field Effects on Mechanical Cantilevers with Deposited Thin Film Micromagnets

We report on the techniques used to deposit magnetic material onto mechanical cantilevers. The deposition of the magnetic material, permalloy, onto the cantilevers was achieved by using a precise masking technique before mounting the cantilevers inside an electron beam evaporation chamber. This method resulted in a mechanical cantilever with a deposited micromagnet on its tip. A typical size of the resulting micromagnet is 200 nm thick by 20 microns wide by 10 microns in height. Using a laser interferometer, the driven response of the cantilevers with the deposited micromagnets are currently being studied in vacuum as a function of the external magnetic field. We will analyze the magnetic-field-dependent changes in the resonant frequencies and the quality factors of the cantilevers to determine the micromagnet net moment and anisotropy constants.