Room-Temperature Sensing of Single Electrons Using Vibrating-Reed Electrometer in Silicon-on-Glass Technology

Abstract

In the commonly-used existing silicon-on-insulator (SOI) microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) process, a siliconoxide-silicon sandwich structure in the sensor device creates parasitic capacitance, which reduces the charge sensitivity. In this letter, for the first time, we demonstrate a vibrating-reed based electrometry system with high sensitivity and resolution in the silicon-on-glass (SOG) MEMS process. In this work, we utilize a glass substrate instead of silicon to ameliorate charge sensitivity by reducing the parasitic capacitance. An improved preamplifier circuit topology incorporating with the proposed sensor shows a sensitivity of 1.43×10 11 V/C, which is the highest in the literature. In addition, the best charge resolution of 1.03 e/ √ Hz@5.7 kHz has achieved at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. This result provides strong evidence for the validity of our SOG based MEMS device as a charge sensor for detecting even a single electron.

Design and Fabrication of a Novel Wheel-Ring Triaxial Gyroscope

“…Combining Equation (1) and the sensitivity equation, the sensitivity expression is: The drive signal can be written in the form of f = F d cos(ω d t), where ω d is the resonant frequency. Combining Equation ( 1) and the sensitivity equation, the sensitivity expression is: (32) where ω 1 and ω 2 are the drive and sensing frequencies, respectively, when ∆d reaches its maximum value. At this time, the maximum value of vibration amplitude is reached under the sensing mode, so the relationship between the amount of capacitance change and the input angular velocity can be obtained as:…”

“…where R3 represents the outer radius of the disc, a1 represents the vertical distance between the origin and the disk-shaped electrode, θy represents the central angle corresponding to the disc, and l2 represents the initial distance between the upper and lower plates. The calculation principle of the sensitivity of the wheel structure is similar to Equation (32), and the calculation results are as follows:…”

“…Accelerometers, relays, and gyroscopes are usually processed by SOG (silicon on glass) technology, which is relatively simple and has a very low parasitic capacitance [32][33][34]. The structure was manufactured with SOG.…”

Digital Circuits and Systems based on Single-Electron Tunneling Technology

“…It is worth mentioning that the smaller the dimension of the island, the higher the temperature the SET can operate at. Despite the fabrication challenge of such small devices, the operation of SETs up to 350 K has already been reported [4,9,10,11]. To achieve room temperature operation, two critical points must be observed:…”