Related papers: Design, fabrication and characterization of kineti…
Active microelectromechanical systems can couple the nanomechanical domain with the electronic domain by integrating electronic sensing and actuation mechanisms into the micromechanical device. This enables very fast and sensitive…
We report on progress in developing compact sensors for atomic force microscopy (AFM), in which the mechanical transducer is integrated with near-field optical readout on a single chip. The motion of a nanoscale, doubly-clamped cantilever…
Long and thin scanning force cantilevers are sensitive to small forces, but also vulnerable to detrimental non-contact interactions. Here we present an experiment with a cantilever whose spring constant and static deflection are dominated…
Cooling down nanomechanical force probes is a generic strategy to enhance their sensitivities through the concomitant reduction of their thermal noise and mechanical damping rates. However, heat conduction mechanisms become less efficient…
Single-chip CMOS-based biosensors that feature microcantilevers as transducer elements are presented. The cantilevers are functionalized for the capturing of specific analytes, e.g., proteins or DNA. The binding of the analyte changes the…
Mechanical resonators based on a single carbon nanotube are exceptional sensors of mass and force. The force sensitivity in these ultra-light resonators is often limited by the noise in the detection of the vibrations. Here, we report on an…
High-frequency atomic force microscopy has enabled extraordinary new science through large bandwidth, high speed measurements of atomic and molecular structures. However, traditional optical detection schemes restrict the dimensions, and…
Using light as a probe to detect a mechanical motion is one of the most successful experimental approaches in physics. The history of mechanical sensing based on the reflection, refraction and scattering of light dates back to the 16th…
Fabrication processes involving anhydrous hydrofluoric vapor etching are developed to create high-$Q$ aluminum superconducting microwave resonators on free-standing silicon membranes formed from a silicon-on-insulator wafer. Using this…
Single-photon detectors based on the superconducting transition-edge sensor are used in a number of visible to near-infrared applications, particularly for photon-number-resolving measurements in quantum information science. To be practical…
Atomic force microscopy cantilevers are often, intentionally or not, heated at their extremity. We describe a model to compute the resulting temperature field in the cantilever and in the surrounding fluid on a wide temperature range. In…
Force detectors rely on resonators to transduce forces into a readable signal. Usually these resonators operate in the linear regime and their signal appears amidst a competing background comprising thermal or quantum fluctuations as well…
In this review article, we focus on emerging nanocantilever based biological sensors and discuss the response of nanocantilevers towards bio-molecules capture. The article guides the reader through various modes of operation (e.g., static…
This work focuses on the development and demonstration of tunable superconducting on-chip resonator, leveraging the intrinsic current-dependent non-linear kinetic inductance of superconducting aluminium, and investigating the effect of…
A force measurement technique has been developed that utilizes a clamped fiber optic element both as a cantilever and as a highly sensitive probe of the static and dynamic displacement of a sample that is mounted near its free end. Light…
This paper reports on the systematic electromechanical characterization of a new three-axial force sensor used in dimensional metrology of micro components. The siliconbased sensor system consists of piezoresistive mechanicalstress…
Measurements of the deflection induced by thermal noise have been performed on a rectangular atomic force microscope cantilever in air. The detection method, based on polarization interferometry, can achieve a resolution of 1E-14 m/rtHz in…
The force sensor is key to the performance of atomic force microscopy (AFM). Nowadays, most AFMs use micro-machined force sensors made from silicon, but piezoelectric quartz sensors are applied at an increasing rate, mainly in vacuum. These…
The sensitivity of mechanical resonators to physical quantities such as acceleration, pressure, mass and temperature enables them to underpin sensing and metrology applications. Here, we observe that the resonance frequency of a…
Nowadays, silicon micro-cantilevers with different geometrical shapes are widely used as micro-electro-mechanical systems and, more recently, as force sensor probes in atomic force microscopy (AFM). During the last ten years, several…