Design and fabrication of electrothermal SiC nanoresonators for high-resolution nanoparticle sensing

Abstract

In this work, we present the design and fabrication of high-frequency SiC nanoresonators for highly sensitive nanoparticle sensing. A 280-nm single crystalline SiC film was grown on a Si wafer, and released from the substrate using an isotropic dry etching process. The SiC nanoresonators were then formed using the Focused Ion Beam technique. The simulation results show that the as-fabricated resonators can be thermally actuated at a very high in-plane resonant frequency of 366.11 MHz, and utilized as sensitive nano-particle sensing elements with a high mass sensitivity of 233 kHz/femtogram. These data indicate the possibility of developing SiC nanoresonators for high-resolution mass sensing and other high-frequency applications.