Abstract
With their unparalleled mass sensitivity, enabling single-molecule mass spectrometry, nanomechanical resonators have the potential to considerably improve existing sensor technology. Vertical pillar resonators are a promising alternative to the existing lateral resonator designs. However, one major obstacle still stands in the way of their practical use: The efficient transduction (actuation & detection) of the vibrational motion of such tiny structures, even more so when large arrays of such nanopillars need to be driven. While electrostatic forces are typically weak and, on the nanoscale even weaker when compared to a cantilever-like stiffness, it is worth revisiting the possibility of electrostatic actuation of nanomechanical pillars and other nanomechanical structures. In this paper, these forces produced by an external field are studied both analytically and numerically, and their dependencies on the geometric dimensions are discussed. Furthermore, the expected deflections for different configurations of pillar geometries are calculated and compared.
Highlights
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have become an integral part of modern consumer products and professional medical devices, and as such have become omnipresent helpers in our lives
We propose to drive pillar dimers electrostatically by means of an external electrostatic field
We study the case of pillar dimers featuring a conductive tip, e.g., a plasmonic gold tip (Sadeghi et al, 2017), or pillars that are made of a conductive material, such
Summary
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have become an integral part of modern consumer products and professional medical devices, and as such have become omnipresent helpers in our lives. The mechanical oscillations of such resonators are highly sensitive to perturbations coming from the environment This makes them excellent sensors in particular for mass sensing, since the mass responsivity inversely scales with the effective mass of the resonator (Schmid et al, 2016). The typically used horizontal nanomechanical sensors are sensitive to the landing position of the mass along their length This requires a sophisticated dual-mode operation of the first and second normal mode (Naik et al, 2009; Dohn et al, 2010; Schmid et al, 2010), which significantly complicates the sensor design. The efficient transduction (actuation & detection of mechanical motion) of NEMS has generally remained a challenge, for pillars in particular. We study the case of pillar dimers featuring a conductive tip, e.g., a plasmonic gold tip (Sadeghi et al, 2017), or pillars that are made of a conductive material, such
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