Real-time sensing with multiplexed optomechanical resonators

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multiplexed optomechanical sensing scheme that enables simultaneous high-frequency measurements of multiple microresonators, enhancing sensitivity, throughput, and enabling multi-parametric analysis.

Contribution

The authors present a novel multiplexing approach for high-frequency optomechanical resonators that simplifies readout and improves sensing performance compared to electrical transduction methods.

Findings

Simultaneous measurement of three silicon microdisks resonators achieved.

The readout architecture maintains sensing resolution without degradation.

The scheme enables faster, more sensitive multi-parametric sensing.

Abstract

Nanoelectromechanical resonators have been successfully used for a variety of sensing applications. Their extreme resolution comes from their small size at the cost of low capture area, making the "needle in a haystack" issue acute. This leads to poor instrument sensitivity and long analysis time. Moreover, electrical transductions are limited in frequency, which limits the achievable mechanical bandwidth again limiting throughput. Multiplexing a large number of high-frequency resonators appears as a solution, but this is complex with electrical transductions. We propose here a route to solve these issues, with a multiplexing scheme for very high frequency optomechanical resonators. We demonstrate the simultaneous frequency measurement of three silicon microdisks resonators fabricated through a Very Large Scale Integration process. The readout architecture is simple and does not degrade the sensing resolutions. This paves the way towards the realization of sensors for multi-parametric analysis, extremely low limit of detection and response time.