H2020Индивидуална стипендия2020–2022

MOSTAPDE · MOde-localized mass Sensors with Thermal Actuation and Piezoresistive DEtection

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2020-12-01 → 2022-11-30
Финансиране от ЕС: 178 320 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Микро- и наносензори за измерване на масата на единични молекули, протеини и наночастици се разработват чрез термично задвижване и пиезорезистивно откриване. Те помагат за подобряване на чувствителността и точността на биомедицинската диагностика при нормално атмосферно налягане.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

MOde-localized mass Sensors with Thermal Actuation and Piezoresistive DEtection

Micro/nano-electromechanical system (M/NEMS) resonators have been widely applied in the fields of sensing, communication, and biomedical diagnosis. Frequency-modulated resonant sensors that transduce a physical or chemical quantity to be measured into a shift in resonant frequency are extremely attractive. Resonant mass sensors have been employed for biochemical applications for weighing single molecules, proteins, and nanoparticles, and even monitoring the growth of living cells. Great challenges for MEMS resonant mass sensors include (i) Improving the sensors’ quality factor (Q-factor) at ambient atmospheric pressure and realizing a real-time monitoring system with high sensitivity are the two great challenges that resonant sensors face. The project “MOSTAPDE” aims to develop a thermal-piezoresistive resonant mass sensor with a mode localization phenomenon to address the above-mentioned challenges. The following milestones are approached during the progress: (1) Developed the dicing-free fabrication process for thermal-piezoresistive resonators, demonstrating the fundamental basis and the feasibility of this project. (2) Simulated the mechanical characteristics of the thermal-piezoresistive resonators, and observed physical self-oscillation when being excited by the current. (3) Fabricated single degree-of-freedom thermal-piezoresistive resonators as well as coupled thermal-piezoresistive resonators, and constructed the measurement setup. (4) Characterized the fabricated devices and obtained some exploitable results which have not been reported yet, and published several papers on this topic. The objectives listed in the DoA include: (1) Establish a theoretically analytical framework and a finite element model (FEM) of the WCRs, with multi-physics simulations coupling the mechanical, thermal and electrical fields using COMSOL Multiphysics and CoventorWare, as design tools for the sensor and circuit developments. (2) Develop the mass sensor as well as its fabrication process, to integrate on a silicon wafer substrate weakly coupled resonators, thermal actuation elements and piezoresistive detection gauges. (3) Design a closed-loop control circuit for the proposed mass sensor to realize real-time monitoring at ambient pressure with high resolution and short response time.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Micro/nano-electromechanical system (M/NEMS) resonant mass sensors have attracted utmost interest over the past two decades. This is due to their wide range of applications, especially in biochemistry, for instance weighing single molecules, nanoparticles, and even monitoring the growth of living cells. However, their performance is significantly decreased when operated at ambient air and measurements take a considerable time. Therefore, there are two main challenges for MEMS resonant mass sensors: (i) the improvement of the quality factor at ambient atmospheric pressure; (ii) the realization of real-time monitoring with a closed-loop control and interface circuit system. Additionally, higher sensitivity is always a desirable property to further increase the performance of mass sensors. In this project, entitled “MOde-localized mass Sensors with Thermal Actuation and Piezoresistive DEtection (MOSTAPDE)”, I aim addressing aforementioned challenges by combing thermal actuation and piezoresistive detection for MEMS resonators. With this approach a quality factor of several thousand at ambient pressure can be achieved. As a further novel approach, it is proposed to weakly couple two resonators and exploit the phenomenon of mode localization; by using the amplitude ratio as readout metric compared to the commonly used frequency modulation method; in this way the sensitivity can be enhanced by 2-3 orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the inherent common mode rejection property of mode-localized sensors can be exploited for higher robustness. Finally, particle contamination and blockage are avoided as the proposed sensors do not require small electrode-gaps as conventional capacitive sensors. For the microfabricated sensors, a closed-loop control circuit will be constructed to enable real time monitoring. We plan to demonstrate the concepts for measuring particulate matter, which is a major air pollutant, as a practical application of mass sensing.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN · LeuvenКоординаторБелгия