Abstract

Nanomechanical resonator makes itself as an ideal system for ultrasensitive mass sensing due to its ultralow mass and high vibrational frequency. The traditional method for measuring the mass of particles by using mass spectrometry, which requires that the particles must be ionized, and then the charge on the ionized particle needs to be known before its mass can be extracted. While for uncharged particles (such as DNAs) and the particles hard to be ionized, the traditional mass spectrometry is a drawback. Subsequently, one proposes a scheme for mass sensors that nanomechanical resonators (NRs) are suspended between two electrodes above a conducting plate with a voltage. Here the mass sensing principle is due to the relationship of the frequency-shift and mass-variation. Although this scheme does not require that the particle must be ionized, while the voltage can produce a heating effect during the measurement. Compared to these schemes based on the electrical measurement, in this talk, we shall propose and review our recent mass sensing with all-optical domain [1, 2]. The masses of external particles landing onto the surface of nanomechanical resonator can be determined directly and accurately via using the linear and nonlinear optical spectroscopy. These optical mass sensors proposed here may provide a linear/nonlinear optical measurement technique in quantum measurements.

© 2014 Optical Society of America