Collaborating researchers from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, 3D printed mechanical nanoresonators with properties such as quality factor, published stability, mass sensitivity, and strength comparable to those of silicon resonators.
While producing nano electromechanical system (NEMS) sensors is still limited by the high manufacturing cost of traditional silicon-based technologies, 3D printing has shown that similar structures can be created at low cost and with interesting intrinsic functionalities, but the performance as mass sensors has been poor, until now.
In its research, the group created nanodevices (membranes, cantilever, bridges) by two-photon polymerization on new liquid compositions, followed by a thermal process that removes the organic content, leaving a ceramic structure with high rigidity and low internal dissipation.
It also characterized them by laser Doppler vibrometry and published the results in the article “Reaching silicon-based NEMS performances with 3D printer nanomechanical resonators” in Nature Communications.
“The NEMS that we have fabricated and characterized,” explains Stefano Stassi, researcher at the Department of Applied Science and Technology at Politecnico di Torino, “have mechanical performances in line with current silicon devices, but they are obtained through a simpler, faster and more versatile process, thanks to which it is also possible to add new chemical-physical functionalities. For example, the material used in the article is Nd: YAG, normally used as a solid-state laser source in the infrared range.”
“The ability to fabricate complex and miniature devices that have performance similar to silicon ones,” says Shlomo Magdassi, researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “by a quick and simple 3D printing process, brings new horizons to the field of additive manufacturing and rapid manufacturing.”
Image – Courtesy of: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
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Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Politecnico di Torino
