Contributed Review: Quartz force sensing probes for micro-applications.

As self-sensing and self-exciting probes, quartz sensors present many advantages over silicon cantilevers for microscopy, micro-robotics, and other micro-applications. Their development and use is further bolstered by the fact that they can be manufactured from common quartz components. This paper therefore reviews applications of the increasingly popular quartz tuning fork probes as force sensors in the literature and examines the options for higher-frequency quartz probes using the other available types of flexional, thickness-shear or length-extensional resonators.