This work introduces a novel concept for energy scavenging from ambient vibrations utilizing ZnO nanowires (NWs). This concept relies on the combination into a single device of a resonant element (i.e. an inertial mass suspended by four serpentine springs) and two arrays of NWs grown at both sides of the inertial mass. The NWs can be bent as a result of the resonant motion of the mass. Due to t...

Optical microfiber-based temperature sensors have been proposed for many applications in a variety of industrial uses, including biomedical, geological, automotive, and defense applications. This increasing demand for these micrometric devices is attributed to their large dynamic range, high sensitivity, fast-response, compactness and robustness. Additionally, they can perform in-situ measureme...

Miniaturized gas chromatography (GC) systems can provide fast, quantitative analysis of chemical vapors in an ultrasmall package. We describe a chemical sensor technology based on resonant nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) mass detectors that provides the speed, sensitivity, specificity, and size required by the microscale GC paradigm. Such NEMS sensors have demonstrated detection of subpart...

This work presents for the first time a zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF)-coupled resonant gas sensor whose sensitivity shows an improvement up to 78 times over bare silicon resonant sensors with identical dimensions. ZIFs are among the highest surface area material used for resonant-based sensing. We utilize high surface area-to-volume ratios of ZIFs to demonstrate how a microresonator coup...

Vibrating resonators are important components of micromechanical systems, with applications in sensors and actuators. However, defects and stresses can cause resonance shifts, and it is important to develop methods of tuning. Passive methods are based on dimensional trimming and active methods on electrically-induced stress. For example, reactive ion etching (RIE) has been used to apply global ...

This paper adopts Taguchi's signal-to-noise ratio analysis to optimize the dynamic characteristics of a SAW gas sensor system whose output response is linearly related to the input signal. The goal of the present dynamic characteristics study is to increase the sensitivity of the measurement system while simultaneously reducing its variability. A time- and cost-efficient finite element analysis...

Resonant mechanical sensors are often considered as mass balance, which responds to an analyte adsorbed on or absorbed in a thin sensitive (and selective) layer deposited the surface of resonant device. In more general sense, sensor measures properties at interface resonator medium under inspection . A phononic crystal (PnC) employs resonance well; however, working principle is fundamentally di...

The newly proposed in-plane resonant nano-electro-mechanical (IP R-NEM) sensor, that includes a doubly clamped suspended beam and two side electrodes, achieved a mass sensitivity of less than zepto g/Hz based on analytical and numerical analyses. The high frequency characterization and numerical/analytical studies of the fabricated sensor show that the high vacuum measurement environment will e...