A Zinc Oxide Nanobeam Resonator for Ultrasensitivity Mass Detection

Abstract

Nanomechanical resonators are expected to be exceptional sensors for high-performance mass detection, mechanical sensing, and signal processing. In this paper, zinc oxide nanobeam resonators are produced based on single-crystal ZnO nanowire, which has a typical diameter down to a few nanometers and the length of hundreds of micrometers. This resonator has the characteristics of high aspect ratio nanobeam structure and reliable material. It is observed that the resonance frequency of ZnO nanobeam resonator is up to 1.47 MHz with a high quality factor of 2300 at room temperature, which will play a key role in high-sensitivity mass detection. The mass detection of ZnO nanobeam resonator is demonstrated by depositing platinum atoms on the middle of the beam, which shows a sensitivity of 11.13 Hz fg−1 indicating its ultrasensitive mass detection capability. In addition, according to the experiment, the molecular dynamics simulations for the resonator is established, which shows that the detection resolution down to 0.2 yg at room temperature can be realized based on this resonator. The results show that the ZnO nanobeam resonator has enormous potential in ultrasensitive detection for biosensing and gas sensing.