Simultaneous mode tracking for sensing applications with dual-mode heterodyne NEMS oscillator

Sebastien Hentz (1, 2) , Guillaume Gourlat (1, 2) , Marc Sansa (2, 1) , Guillaume Jourdan (1, 2) , Patrick Villard (1, 2) , Gilles Sicard (1, 2)

1 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information
2 UGA [2016-2019] - Université Grenoble Alpes [2016-2019]

We report the first experimental demonstration of a heterodyne self-oscillator operating simultaneously on the first and second mode of a silicon NEMS resonator. This architecture tackles the simultaneous monitoring of a doubly-clamped resonator’s first two resonant modes required for real world applications in the field of biological mass sensing. This oscillator is based on a downmixing scheme where the NEMS motioninduced electrical signal around 25 MHz and 70 MHz is shifted down to few tens of kilohertz thus reducing the bandwidth constraint on electronics and limiting the feedthrough between the NEMS actuation and detection electrode. In this paper, we present the oscillator measurement results in open-loop and closed-loop, and we evaluate the frequency stability. When implemented on silicon this oscillator scheme will help to circumvent today’s limited NEMS integration density mostly due to a bulky circuitry.

Keywords: NEMS; MEMS; oscillator; resonator; mass spectrometry; mass sensing; heterodyne; dual-mode

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]; Engineering Sciences [physics]; Micro and nanotechnologies/Microelectronics

Sebastien Hentz, Guillaume Gourlat, Marc Sansa, Guillaume Jourdan, Patrick Villard, et al.. Simultaneous mode tracking for sensing applications with dual-mode heterodyne NEMS oscillator. 2016 IEEE SENSORS, Oct 2016, Orlando, United States. 3 p., ⟨10.1109/ICSENS.2016.7808662⟩. ⟨cea-02194487⟩