Efficient Activation of Nanomechanical Resonators

Abstract

poor electromechanical coupling efficiency due to the reduced capacitive area for actuation and detection, as well as the tremendous stiffness increase of their structural components. Alternative to miniaturization to achieve higher operational frequencies is to exploit higher-order vibration modes of the nanostructures. This however requires ultra-high actuation forces, which practically are not available. Moreover, considerable interest has grown recently on exploiting nonlinear vibration phenomena for developing devices with superior performances, [20,21] which also requires large forcing. Active electronic components, amplifiers, can be used to boost the drive signal, however, it increases device footprint and fabrication cost. Also, state-of-the-art amplifiers are hindered by limited gain at high frequencies. The requirement of low voltage to actuate sensors and actuators imposed constraints on the design and the choice of material for sensors and actuators [22][23][24] and often complicates the circuit design in order to amplify the voltage. [25] Hence, it is fundamentally important to develop a methodology that efficiently excites nanoscale resonators with available low voltages, AC and DC, in electronic circuits and detect the generated motional signals produced by sub-nanometer scale vibrations with high signal-to-noise ratio.LC tank resonant circuits have been widely proposed for efficient coupling between different physical domains, such as, electrical, mechanical, and optical. [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] An LC tank circuit based impedance matching technique was shown to be effective in probing a single and arrayed nanoscale resonators. [26] The LC tank resonance frequency, f LC , was matched with the mechanical resonance frequency, f m , enabling efficient radio frequency (RF) power coupling at resonance with the detection circuit. This facilitated the detection of individual nanoresonator response in an array by measuring the reflected signal, which was otherwise overwhelmed by the parasitic signal. Bagci et al. [27] used similar LC tank resonant circuit (f LC = f m ) to facilitate strong coupling between the radio waves and a nano-opto-electromechanical transducer at room temperature, and demonstrated the detection of weak radio wave signals with quantum-limited sensitivity. Sillanpää et al. [28] used a GHz frequency LC tank circuit (f LC >> f m ) to block the external wiring capacitances in the electrical readout circuit, and efficiently detected the nanoresonator response by monitoring the sideband voltage created by Electrostatically transduced nano-electromechanical system resonators operating in the very high and ultra-high frequency bands are promising for many practical applications. However, electrostatically transduced nanoscale devices commonly suffer from poor transduction efficiency due to the reduced capacitive area for actuation and detection. Also, the requirement of ultra-high actuation forces renders exploitation of their higher-order vibration modes and the desirable nonli...

High Performance Micro Resonators-Based Sensors Using Multimode Excitation

“…Thus, significant efforts have been presented to amplify their dynamic response and boost the output signal. One of the solutions that have been proposed is by adding an electrical LC tank resonant circuit [6][7]. Another approach is based on the internal resonance phenomenon [8][9][10], in which various vibration modes exchange energy when their natural frequencies have commensurate ratios.…”