| AVS 56th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| MEMS and NEMS | Friday Sessions |
| Session MN-FrM |
| Session: | Multi-scale Interactions of Materials and Fabrication at the Micro- and Nano-scale |
| Presenter: | R.A. Barton, Cornell University |
| Authors: | R.A. Barton, Cornell University B.R. Ilic, Cornell University S.S. Verbridge, Cornell University H. Craighead, Cornell University J.M. Parpia, Cornell University |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
The ability of nanomechanical resonators to sense mass in a liquid environment is compromised by a large dissipation of energy to the surrounding liquid. One way to overcome this problem is to deliver analytes in solution to the resonator via an embedded fluidic channel, while surrounding the resonator itself with vacuum. Previously, this technique has been applied to detect mass from solution with roughly femtogram precision, but it has never been applied with the sensitivity required to detect single biomolecules. In order to enable studies in the regime of attogram analyte mass, we have designed and fabricated resonators that contain nanofluidic channels. We optically actuate and detect mechanical resonance of the channels and estimate from their frequency and quality factor that they will be able to detect mass with sub-attogram precision. We anticipate that these devices will be useful for sensing and for studies of single large biomolecules.