This paper studies two different approaches for evanescent wave optical sensing: an horizontal one and a vertical one. In horizontal waveguides, the evanescent wave is distributed on the upper cladding. While in a vertical configuration, the evanescent wave is distributed on the left and right sides of the waveguide. In an horizontal configuration the evanescent wave can be also on both sides of the waveguide in order to increase the optical energy for sensing if the substrate under the waveguide is locally removed. However, in this configuration to achieve sensitive devices, the layers have to be freestanding and thin [1] limiting practical implementations of such approaches. Furthermore, very few materials can be defined as tall and thin in the case of a vertical configuration, as the deposition techniques often used (PECVD/LPCVD) are meant for films in the couple of micron range. In the following we will investigate the properties of the materials used but also the fabrication feasibility for both configurations.

In this Letter, a slope transfer method to fabricate vertical waveguide couplers is proposed. This method utilises wet etched Si as a mask, and takes advantage of dry etching selectivity between Si and SiC, to successfully transfer the profile from the Si master into SiC. By adopting this method, a <2° slope is achieved. Such a taper can bring the coupling efficiency in SiC waveguides to 80% (around 1 dB loss) or better from around 10% (10 dB loss) without taper. It further increases the alignment tolerance at the same time, which ensures the successful development of a plug-and-play solution for optical sensing. This is the first reported taper made in SiC.

In this paper, we propose a novel vertical SU-8 waveguide for evanescent analyte sensing. The waveguide is designed to possess a vertical and narrow structure to generate evanescent waves on both sides of the waveguide's surface, aimed at increasing the sensitivity by enlarging the sensing areas. We performed simulations to monitor the influence of different parameters on the waveguide's performance, including its height and width. E-beam lithography was used to fabricate the structure, as this one-step direct writing process enables easy, fast, and high-resolution fabrication. Furthermore, it reduces the sidewall roughness and decreases the induced scattering loss, which is a major source of waveguide loss. Couplers were added to improve the coupling efficiency and alignment tolerance, and will contribute to the feasibility of a plug-and-play optical system. Optical measurements show that the transmission loss is 1.03 ± 0.19 dB/cm. The absorption sensitivity was measured to be 4.8 dB per refractive index unit (dB/RIU) for saline solutions with various concentrations.

Cavity optomechanics has achieved the major breakthrough of the preparation and observation of macroscopic mechanical oscillators in non-classical states. The development of reliable indicators of the oscillator properties in these conditions is important also for applications to quantum technologies. We compare two procedures to infer the oscillator occupation number, minimizing the necessity of system calibrations. The former starts from homodyne spectra, the latter is based on the measurement of the motional sideband asymmetry in heterodyne spectra. Moreover, we describe and discuss a method to control the cavity detuning, that is a crucial parameter for the accuracy of the latter, intrinsically superior procedure.

We present the world's first backside-illuminated (BSI) single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) based on standard silicon-on-insulator (SOI) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. This SPAD achieves a good dark count rate (DCR) after backside etching, comparable to DCRs of BSI SPADs fabricated on bulk wafers. Unlike bulk-wafer-based BSI SPADs, which typically suffer from poor violet and blue sensitivity, the proposed BSI SPAD features increased near-ultraviolet sensitivity as well as significant sensitivity in the violet and blue spectral ranges, thanks to the ultrathin-body SOI. To the best of our knowledge, this is the best result ever reported for any BSI SPAD in the standard CMOS technology. In addition, it also shows high sensitivity at long wavelengths thanks to the interface between silicon and silicon-dioxide layers. Therefore, it achieves a photon detection probability over 26% at 500 nm and 10% in the 400-875 nm wavelength range at 3 V excess bias voltage. The timing jitter is 119 ps full width at half maximum at the same operation condition at 637 nm wavelength. For the proposed BSI SPAD, the buried oxide layer in SOI wafers is used as an etching stop during the wafer backside-etching process, and therefore it ensures the excellent performance uniformity in large arrays.

Organ-on-chip (OOC) is becoming the alternative tool to conventional in vitro screening. Heart-on-chip devices including microstructures for mechanical and electrical stimulation have been demonstrated to be advantageous to study structural organization and maturation of heart cells. This paper presents the development of metal and polymeric strain gauges for in situ monitoring of mechanical strain in the Cytostretch platform for heart-on-chip application. Specifically, the optimization of the fabrication process of metal titanium (Ti) strain gauges and the investigation on an alternative material to improve the robustness and performance of the devices are presented. The transduction behavior and functionality of the devices are successfully proven using a custom-made set-up. The devices showed resistance changes for the pressure range (0-3 kPa) used to stretch the membranes on which heart cells can be cultured. Relative resistance changes of approximately 0.008% and 1.2% for titanium and polymeric strain gauges are respectively reported for membrane deformations up to 5%. The results demonstrate that both conventional IC metals and polymeric materials can be implemented for sensing mechanical strain using robust microfabricated organ-on-chip devices.

We describe a method to control the cavity detuning in optomechanics experiments. This helps accurate measurements of the asymmetry in the motional sidebands, that testify the quantum behavior of the oscillator and quantifies its occupation number.

A highly miniaturized, single-chip, large scanning range MOEMS scanner is demonstrated. This intrinsically-aligned, monolithically integrated device uses small angular displacement to provide a linear scanning range of 2000 μm in the lateral and 1000 μm in the vertical direction, at a working distance of 2 cm, with an average operating power lower than 170 mW. Within a footprint of only 7×10 mm², the presented system fully integrates a photonic interferometer comprising a mirror, a silicon microlens and the MEMS actuator into a single chip, thus offering an unprecedentedly miniaturized scanning solution. The monolithic integration of all photonic components provides intrinsic alignment and excludes coupling losses often encountered in systems composed of discrete parts. No additional attenuation of the optical signal is observed during device operation. This small and high-performance device is suitable as complete system-on-chip for commercial, portable imaging applications.

According to quantum mechanics, if we keep observing a continuous variable we generally disturb its evolution. For a class of observables, however, it is possible to implement a so-called quantum nondemolition measurement: by confining the perturbation to the conjugate variable, the observable is estimated with arbitrary accuracy, or prepared in a well-known state. For instance, when the light bounces on a movable mirror, its intensity is not perturbed (the effect is just seen on the phase of the radiation), but the radiation pressure allows one to trace back its fluctuations by observing the mirror motion. In this work, we implement a cavity optomechanical experiment based on an oscillating micromirror, and we measure correlations between the output light intensity fluctuations and the mirror motion. We demonstrate that the uncertainty of the former is reduced below the shot-noise level determined by the corpuscular nature of light.

In this contribution, we discuss the implementation of a novel microelectromechanical-systems (MEMS)-based energy harvester (EH) concept within the technology platform available at the ISAS Institute (TU Vienna, Austria). The device, already presented by the authors, exploits the piezoelectric effect to convert environmental vibrations energy into electricity, and presents multiple resonant modes in the frequency range of interest (i.e. below 10 kHz). The experimental characterisation of a sputter deposited aluminium nitride piezoelectric thin-film layer is reported, leading to the extraction of material properties parameters. Such values are then incorporated in the finite element method model of the EH, implemented in Ansys Workbench™, in order to get reasonable estimates of the converted power levels achievable by the proposed device solution. Multiphysics simulations indicate that extracted power values in the range of several µW can be addressed by the EH-MEMS concept when subjected to mechanical vibrations up to 10 kHz, operating in closed-loop conditions (i.e. piezoelectric generator connected to a 100 kΩ resistive load). This represents an encouraging result, opening up the floor to exploitations of the proposed EH-MEMS device in the field of wireless sensor networks and zero-power sensing nodes.

Optomechanical SiN nano-oscillators in high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavities can be used to investigate the interaction between mechanical and optical degree of freedom for ultra-sensitive metrology and fundamental quantum mechanical studies. In this paper, we present a nano-oscillator made of a high-stress round-shaped SiN membrane with an integrated on-chip 3-D acoustic shield properly designed to reduce mechanical losses. This oscillator works in the range of 200 kHz to 5 MHz and features a mechanical quality factor of Q ≃ 10⁷ and a Q-frequency product in excess of 6.2 × 10¹² Hz at room temperature, fulfilling the minimum requirement for quantum ground-state cooling of the oscillator in an optomechanical cavity. The device is obtained by MEMS deep reactive-ion etching (DRIE) bulk micromachining with a two-side silicon processing on a silicon-on-insulator wafer. The microfabrication process is quite flexible such that additional layers could be deposited over the SiN membrane before the DRIE steps, if required for a sensing application. Therefore, such oscillator is a promising candidate for quantum sensing applications in the context of the emerging field of quantum technologies. 

Normal-mode splitting is the most evident signature of strong coupling between two interacting subsystems. It occurs when two subsystems exchange energy between themselves faster than they dissipate it to the environment. Here we experimentally show that a weakly coupled optomechanical system at room temperature can manifest normal-mode splitting when the pump field fluctuations are antisquashed by a phase-sensitive feedback loop operating close to its instability threshold. Under these conditions the optical cavity exhibits an effectively reduced decay rate, so that the system is effectively promoted to the strong coupling regime.

In this paper, we present an electrothermal biaxial MEMS actuator system, which provides x-A nd y-direction scanning for a fully integrated 3-D optical coherence tomography (OCT) scanner. An angular scanning range of 8° (corresponding to a 7-mm linear scanning range in both directions) is achieved, with an average power consumption of 150 mW. The resonant frequency is 668 and 297 Hz for x-A nd y-directions, respectively. With a footprint of only 2.5×2.5mm², this system is part of a device which also integrates an optical waveguide and a collimated lens on the same chip, thus making the fully integrated, self-aligned, and miniaturized 3-D OCT scanners feasible.

We present a technique to fabricate ultrathin (down to 20 nm) uniform electron transparent windows at dedicated locations in a SiN membrane for in situ transmission electron microscopy experiments. An electron-beam (e-beam) resist is spray-coated on the backside of the membrane in a KOH-etched cavity in silicon which is patterned using through-membrane electron-beam lithography. This is a controlled way to make transparent windows in membranes, whilst the topside of the membrane remains undamaged and retains its flatness. Our approach was optimized for MEMS-based heating chips but can be applied to any chip design. We show two different applications of this technique for (1) fabrication of a nanogap electrode by means of electromigration in thin free-standing metal films and (2) making low-noise graphene nanopore devices.

Two novel MEMS actuator systems (a torsional one and a deflecting one) for a new self-aligned integrated 3D optical coherent tomography (OCT) scanner are reported. These new systems, with a footprint of 2.5mm×2.5 mm each, provide a χ and y scanning range of 730 μm (tilting range of 8°) with an average power consumption of 150 mW. As the device integrates a silicon collimating micro lens, an optical waveguide and a MEMS actuator system on a single chip, it provides a considerable decrease in optical losses thanks to the intrinsic alignment obtained during fabrication, while significantly reducing the complexity and time that assembly and packaging of separate components demand, therefore making fully integrated, miniaturized 3D OCT scanners feasible.

Polymeric (PEDOT:PSS) strain gauges embedded in PDMS membranes fabricated using a full wafer-scale fabrication process capable of realizing reproducible small features, are reported. The devices are characterized using a customized setup, which provides mechanical stretch while dynamically reading the electrical resistance. Measurements show relative resistance changes of approximately 11% for applied pressure up to 4 kPa. The process described is tailored to fabricate pressure sensors and microelectrodes for a flexible substrate-based Organ-on-Chip platform.