Perforated SiN membrane resonators for nanomechanical IR spectroscopy

Constant progress in micro- and nanofabrication provides a great opportunity in development of micro- and nanomechanical resonatorsthat can be used for sensing purposes. These sensors usually consist of singly-clamped cantilever beams, doubly-clamped bridges ormembranes that exhibit resonant behavior. The principle of operation is based on the monitoring of the resonance frequency shift dueto various external factors such as change of temperature. It has been shown that photothermal infrared (IR) spectroscopy based onnanomechanical silicon nitride (SiN) string resonators (NAM-IR) enables the exceptionally fast chemical analysis of pictograms of analytedirectly from liquid solution in only a few minutes [1]. However in this technique the coupling of the IR laser beam to the nanometerwidestring resonators is difficult and inefficient. Therefore perforated SiN membranes with thickness of 100 nm, lateral dimension of1×1 mm2 and 2 µm perforation grid pitch were used instead of strings which makes the IR beam alignment significantly simpler whilemaintaining similar sampling efficiency and photothermal IR absorption sensitivity.