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Sub-nanometer
Displacement Sensing for the Nanogate
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Nanogate
Responsive Environments Group
The nanogate is a micro electromechanical systems (MEMS)
device capable of accurately and repeatably controlling the separation
of a nanometer gap between two very flat surfaces.
The nanometer gap is achieved using a lever-fulcrum structure made from
patterned silicon and Pyrex wafers adhered to each other via anodic bonding.
The lever-fulcrum structure is circular. When force is applied to the
outside edge, the central region can be opened in very small increments
with a certain transmission ratio.
Several unique characteristics of the nanogate may lead to important commercial
and scientific applications:
The minimum gap size is only limited by the roughness of the interacting
surfaces, which for silicon and Pyrex wafers is on the order of a few
nanometers.
The lever-fulcrum structure has high mechanical impedance, which means
the system is relatively immune to interference from thermal noise.
The gap can open and close with a large dynamic range—from a few
nanometers to several microns.
The aspect ratio between the length of the interacting surfaces and the
width of the gap can be as high as 10^6.
Possbile applications:
precision fluid control
molecular sorting
biomolecular detection
The nanogate was originally developed by Alex Slocum's Precision
Engineering research group.
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