Resonant Nano-Electro-Mechanical Sensors for Molecular Mass-Detection

Date:

2008-2011

Theme:

MEMs and NEMs

Funding:

EUFP7

Silicon-based Nano-Electro-Mechanical (NEM) sensors are getting increasing interest because of their compatibility with “In-IC� integration as well as high sensitivity to a change in mass. The NEM sensors enable to detect a small amount of biological or chemical molecules thanking to their nanoscale dimensions and sensitive frequency response. This project presents design of a newly-proposed In-Plane Resonant NEM (IP R-NEM) sensor based on a mass-detection principle and discusses its extremely high mass sensitivity in comparison with present-day mass-detection-based biosensors. Our resonator architecture has amplified output signal due to the integrated lateral FET and can be realized by a top-down process on SOI substrates, which is expected to enable monolithic integration of the NEM sensors with CMOS ICs. This project is financially supported by EUFP7 project NEMSIC (Hybrid Nano-Electro-Mechanical/Integrated Circuit Systems for Sensing and Power Managemant Applications).

Primary investigators

• fah07r
• hm2
• Yoshishige Tsuchiya

Partners

• EPFL
• IMEC-BE
• IMEC-NL
• TUDelft
• CEA-LETI
• Honeywell
• Univ. of Geneva

Associated research groups

• Nano Research Group
• Southampton Nanofabrication Centre