Viscous cavity damping of a microlever in a simple fluid.

We consider the problem of oscillation damping in air of a thermally actuated microlever as it gradually approaches an infinite wall in parallel geometry. As the gap is decreased from 20 microm down to 400 nm, we observe the increasing damping of the lever Brownian motion in the fluid laminar regime. This manifests itself as a linear decrease in the lever quality factor accompanied by a dramatic softening of its resonance, and eventually leads to the freezing of the CL oscillation. We are able to quantitatively explain this behavior by analytically solving the Navier-Stokes equation with perfect slip boundary conditions. Our findings may have implications for microfluidics and micro- and nanoelectromechanical applications.