Micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (M/NEMS) offer tremendous opportunities for technological advancement in mechanical resonator applications including mass, force and energy sensing, microwave amplification, optomechanics, and energy harvesting. These M/NEMS resonators have many favorable qualities including high mechanical quality factors and compatibility with integrated circuit architectures. More specifically, nonlinear, coupled M/NEMS resonating cantilever arrays have been shown to possess complex system dynamics such as intrinsically localized modes, wave propagation, and sensitivity to defects. The collective behavior of these nonlinear interacting cantilever arrays is remarkably sensitive to the slightest perturbation which makes them an excellent candidate for ultra-sensitive sensors. Moreover, custom device responses can be achieved by tuning the electrostatic fringing field coupling, altering the mechanical coupling via the device’s overhang, or by introducing precisely engineered structural imperfections into the arrays. With our work, we have found that the cantilever arrays exhibit distinct propagation bands, abrupt transitions between standing wave patterns, and synchronization.

Various device geometries including interdigitated arrays, opposing element arrays, and di-element arrays were constructed using both silicon and silicon nitride as device layers. The arrays generally consisted of 100 cantilevers or more which limited boundary effects in the devices. Gold electrodes were patterned on top of the cantilevers for parametric electrical actuation and for fringing field electrostatic coupling between adjacent cantilevers. Mechanical coupling in the arrays was achieved through the large overhangs produced during the device release. The amplitude envelope of the out of plane motion of the cantilevers was captured using a CMOS camera using a frame rate of 30 s^-1. The devices were driven electrically and using a piezoelectric transducer under ambient and vacuum conditions. Large, nonlinear vibrational amplitudes were observed in the arrays along with hysteresis. The cantilever arrays exhibited unique standing wave patterns which were sensitive to defects and external loading. Since the dynamics of M/NEMS coupled cantilevers are highly sensitive to local changes in their environment, we envision the practical implementation of coupled arrays for ultra-sensitive chemical, biological, and force sensors in the future.

Analysis of biological molecules is vital in many fundamental problems of molecular biology. ELISA is a widely employed array-based technique for the parallel analysis of biological analystes. This technique however requires fluorescent tagging, which may disrupt the biochemical properties being investigated. Other platforms such as quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) and surface plasmon resonance sensors (SPR) offer alternatives for the analysis of molecular mixtures. However, these platforms are not readily scalable towards large arrays. Resonant mechanical sensors operate by monitoring shifts of resonance frequencies associated to the binding. Such approach enables the frequency modulation of the output, improving the stability/noise-immunity of the reading. In addition, the adsorption sensitivity per unit area of resonators scales favourably as their dimensions are reduced, offering a compelling path for the development large arrays with exquisite mass-sensitivities.

Suspended silicon resonators as narrow as 45 nm were initially reported by Carr, Evoy et al.¹ The brittle properties of this material however limited the yield of these structures to less than 25 %, precluding their use in large arrays. We have recently reinvented the overall approach employed in NEMS fabrication. This new approach combines surface and bulk machining techniques for the release of the device, as opposed to the widely-accepted sacrificial layer approach. We are now routinely fabricating ultra-large arrays of SiCN nanostring resonators as narrow as 8 nm and a yield approaching 100%. These are the narrowest devices produced by any machining method. Each device offers a detection threshold as small as 200 Da. These arrays have successfully been employed for the detection and analysis of protein mixtures. Diazonium modification was developed onto the SiCN surfaces and validated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Similarly modified nanostrings were then covalently functionalized with anti-rabbit IgG as molecular probe. Specific enumeration of rabbit IgG was successfully performed through observation of downshifts of resonant frequencies. The specificity of this enumeration was confirmed through proper negative control experiments. Helium ion microscopy further verified the successful functionalization of nanostrings.

¹D. W. Carr, S. Evoy, L. Sekaric, H. G. Craighead, J. M. Parpia, App. Phys. Lett. 75, 920 (1999).

Devices controlling light via mechanical motion are ubiquitous, from a simple camera’s zoom lens to arrays of moving mirrors correcting for atmospheric distortions in telescopes and digitally projecting movies on the cinema screens. The same optomechanical coupling provides one of the best known techniques for measuring mechanical motion, covering length scales form atomic force microscopy to kilometer scale LIGO interferometers to the red shift measurements over billions of light years. We study optomechanical coupling in micro and nanoscale systems that combine electromechanics with photonics and plasmonics, and apply such chip based optomechanical transducers to solve nanoscale measurement problems. In one example, integrated cavity-optomechanical sensing breaks the common trade-off between sensitivity and bandwidth in atomic force microscopy, allowing extremely low noise motion readout of very fast, nanoscale/picogram mechanical probes. Reducing the probe size not only increases the transduction bandwidth, but also reduces drag and therefore the fundamental thermodynamic force noise when operating in air. Even though the cantilever crossection is much smaller than the optical wavelength, the near-filed coupled high quality factor photonic cavity makes our motion readout exquisitely sensitive. As a second example, I will discuss nanomechanical plasmonic systems, where extreme confinement of the gap plasmon optical modes leads to some of the largest optomechanical coupling coefficients ever observed. I will present electro-mechanical gap plasmon phase modulators and nanomechanically tunable deep subwavelength gap plasmon resonators with potential applications for motion metrology, novel nanoscale sensing and signal transduction and arbitrary wavefront control via nanoelectromechanically tunable optical metasurfaces.

Plasmonic structures can couple electromagnetic radiation into volumes much smaller than the limits imposed by diffraction. This strong confinement of light transforms these static metallic nanostructures into sensitive bio-chemical sensors, near-field probes for imaging, nanoscale light sources, and effective optical tweezers [1-4]. Advancing the plasmonics paradigm to include active devices, whose resonant properties can be dynamically tuned via various electrical, mechanical, or thermal inputs, has great potential to advance nanoscale optical sensing and transduction and for building functional metamaterial devices [5,6].

We present a tunable plasmomechanical system that couples the localized gap plasmon (LGP) resonances of individual subwavelength structures to mechanical, electrical, and thermal modes. By engineering extremely strong optomechanical coupling of the LGPs, we achieve broad tuning of the localized resonances at megahertz frequencies using small voltages < 5 V, producing ≈ 40 % amplitude in the far field and > π phase shift of the re-radiated light. We furthermore show selective, sub-diffraction optical transduction of nanomechanical motion with < 10 fm Hz^-1/2 sensitivity. Coupling of LGPs to thermal modes results in strong thermomechanical backaction capable of driving regenerative mechanical oscillations of cantilever devices – mechanical lasing – using an isolated, subwavelength plasmonic element. Our platform opens the door to smart metamaterials having programmed responses across physical domains, tunable metasurfaces and optical components, and studying optically-powered nonlinear nanomechanics.

[1] J. Anker et al., Nat. Mater. 7, 442–453 (2008).

[2] D. K. Gramotnev and S. I. Bozhevolnyi, Nat. Photon., 83–91 (2010)

[3] Y-J. Lu et al., Science 337, 450–453 (2012)

[4] B. J. Roxworthy et al., Nano Lett. 12, 794–801 (2012)

[5] N. Zheludev and E. Plum, Nat. Nanotech. 11, 16–22 (2016).

1. Introduction

Photocatalytic decomposition plays an important role in the treatment of pollutants. It utilizes light radiation to decompose contaminants into non-toxic substances. While TiO₂ is one of the most widely used photocatalysts, visible light can hardly be used to drive TiO₂ due to the short wavelength cutoff of TiO₂. Plasmon-enhanced photo-catalysis can extend the wavelength range due to higher order effects. However, previously reported work has limited efficiency, because the hot spots were not optimized and the TiO₂ located outside the hottest part of the hotspots. Here, we invented a technology to fabricate collapsible nano-fingers to achieve large-area high density optimized hotspots with TiO₂ film located at the hottest part of the hotspots. We demonstrated highest photo-catalysis efficiency that we are aware of.

2. Device fabrication

First, pillar arrays were patterned on the top two layers using UV-curable nanoimprint lithography (NIL) and reactive ion etch (RIE), as shown in Fig. 1(a) (b) (c). Au film was deposited on the sample followed by lift-off process to form gold nanoparticle arrays with diameter of 50 nm and pitch of 200 nm on the bottom layer, as shown in Fig. 1(d) (e). After nano-fingers were fabricated using RIE, 2 nm TiO2 film was deposited on the sample using atomic layer deposition (ALD), as shown in Fig. 1(f) (g). After the arrays were exposed to ethanol solutions and air-dried, the fingers closed together in groups of two or four. The scanning electron microscopic (SEM) image of the collapsed nano-fingers is shown in Fig. 2.

3. Results and Discussion

The photocatalytic activities were tested using methyl orange (MO) photodegradation as the model reaction. The decay in absorbance of the solution was monitored by Varian Cary 50 UV–Vis spectrophotometer after 8 h exposure to green laser (532 nm, 3 W) irradiation. MO solution and sample were added into a standard quartz cuvette sealed with a sealing film.

The absorption spectra taken before and after irradiating are used to quantify the photocatalytic decomposition rate, as shown in Fig. 3. As a control experiment, we firstly performed experiment under same illumination condition with a silicon wafer coated with 2nm TiO₂ film, no MO photodecomposition was observed even after 12 h irradiation. For the monomers, the absorption of the MO solution is observed to drop by 4.9% after 8 h illumination. However, with collapsed sample, a 30% reduction in the MO absorbance is observed. This over 6-fold enhancement demonstrates a stronger plasmonic enhancement after nano-fingers being collapsed, which means this novel structure is a great platform to study plasmonic enhancement.

Temperature measurements play a crucial role in various aspects of modern technology ranging from medicine and manufacturing process control, to environmental and oil-and-gas industry. Among various temperature measurement solutions, resistance-based thermometry is a time-tested method of disseminating temperature standards [1]. Although industrial resistance thermometers can routinely measure temperatures with uncertainties of 10 mK, their performance is sensitive to multiple environmental variables such as mechanical shock, thermal stress and humidity. Drift of sensor resistance over time necessitates expensive, time-consuming recalibrations using ultra-sensitive reference thermometers. These fundamental limitations of resistance thermometry, as well as the desire to reduce sensor ownership cost have ignited a substantial interest in the development of alternative temperature measurement solutions such as photonics-based temperature sensors. A wide variety of innovative photonic sensors have been proposed recently including functionalized dyes [2], hydrogels [3], fiber optics-based sensors [4], and silicon micro- and nanophotonic devices [5,6]. These innovative temperature sensors have the potential to leverage advances in frequency metrology to provide cost-effective measurement solutions. Here we present the results of our efforts in developing novel on-chip integrated silicon photonic temperature sensors with nanoscale footprint and ultra-high resolution as an alternative solution to legacy-based resistance thermometers. These sensors are Fabry-Perrot cavity type silicon photonic devices that are based on photonic crystal nanobeam cavity (PhCC), whose high-Q resonant frequency mode is highly sensitive to even ultra-small temperature variations. In this talk we describe nanofabrication, fiber coupling and packaging of these thermometers, as well as their performance. We will present a direct comparison of our photonic thermometers to Standard Platinum Resistance Thermometers, the best in class resistance temperature sensors used to disseminate the International Temperature Scale of 1990. The preliminary results indicate that our PhCC nanothermometers are capable of detecting changes of temperature as small as 10 µK and can achieve measurement capabilities that are on-par or even better than the state-of-the-art resistance thermometry.

[1] Strouse, NIST Spec. Publ. 250, 81 (2008).

[2] Donner et al., Nano Lett. 12, 2107 (2012).

[3] Ahmed, J. Adv. Res. 6, 105 (2015).

[4] Kersey et al., IEEE Photonics Technol. Lett. 4, 1183 (1992).

[5] Kim et al., Opt. Express 18, 22215 (2010).

[6] Klimov et al., Proc. SPIE 9486, 948609 (2015).

Noble metal nanoparticles have attracted great attention recently owing to their fascinating optical properties. They work as nanoscopic antennas by amplifying the incident and scattered electromagnetic beam. The incident electromagnetic radiation can excite the surface plasmons of nanoparticles, leading to the confinement of electromagnetic energy around the nanoparticles. This makes the metallic nanoparticles an excellent candidate for the surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) applications. Anisotorpic nanoparticles such as nanostars are much superior for SERS applications over their spherical counterparts owing to the special surface morphology.

We have developed a facile method for the synthesis of gold nanostars with tunable sizes ranging from 50nm to about 1µm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the widest size range reported for gold nanostars. More importantly, we have observed that these nanostars are excellent for SERS based detection owing to their large enhancement factors and efficient fluorescence quenching properties. Fluorescence is known to interfere with and overshadow the SERS signal, thus affecting the trace detection capabilities of SERS. Therefore, usually off resonance excitation lasers must be used for SERS studies of fluorophores, which limits the universal applicability of the SERS technique. We believe that non-compact surfactant coating of nanostars in our case give the target fluorophores access to nanostar’s surface, thus enabling the quenching of fluorescence through Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET). The absence of fluorescence background markedly enhances the appearance of Raman peaks. We were able to achieve a limit of detection of 10pM using an excitation laser source in resonance with the electronic excitation of the target fluoropore. This makes gold nanostars universal substrates for SERS based trace detection.