Nano Tera Wiki: CabTuRes : Enabling Autonomous Sensor Nodes: Low-Power Nano-Sensor/Electronics Building Blocks based on Tunable Carbon Nanotube Electro-Mechanical Resonators

CabTuRes : Enabling Autonomous Sensor Nodes: Low-Power Nano-Sensor/Electronics Building Blocks based on Tunable Carbon Nanotube Electro-Mechanical Resonators

References about CabTuRes:

21 July 2010: Nature NanoTechnology: Hysteresis-free operation of suspended carbon nanotube transistors; also ETHZ News and Supplementary information

Conferences :

3rd Industry Day of the Micro and Nano Science Platform of ETHZ:
- Prof. Bradley Nelson: Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, "Microrobotics and its Market Potential"
- Prof. Christofer Hierold: Group of Micro and Nanosystems, "Carbon NanotubeSensors"

What is CabTuRes

This project aims at combining important elements from the fundamental knowledge base on the physics of CNTs, gathered in the past several years, and the fundamental engineering sciences in the area of micro- and nano-electromechanical systems, to develop novel CNT-based devices and processes.
Specifically, this project will demonstrate concepts and devices for ultra-low power, highly miniaturized functional blocks for sensing and electronics. These key features are considered to enable nano-scale sensing and functional nodes for nano-tera applications. The project builds upon exceptional device- properties of CNT-based nano electro-mechanical resonators. As recently demonstrated or predicted theoretically, CNT-resonators can reach the multi-GHz range, can be tuned via straining over up to 2 decades of frequency, offer an unprecedented sensitivity to strain or mass loading, have potentially high quality factors, and all these with power budgets of ~10 nW.
In addition to these attractive properties, the technology developed in this project is in fact a unique device platform offering a large flexibility in engineering devices as various as chemical, biochemical (mass balance) and physical (stress, strain and pressure) sensors, and electro-mechanical functions for electronics (VCOs, RF frequency detectors and filters.) The technical solution of this project is an innovative System-in-Package concept, combining NEMS resonators with CMOS interface circuitry and packaging, to give an almost autonomous system (lacking power supply) of just a few cubic millimeters. Two different demonstrators will show operation of CNT resonators as voltage controlled oscillators for electronics and mass balances for sensing.