Nanoporous Metals Incorporated into MEMS and NEMS Devices for Enhanced Functionality

该奖项的研究目标是将纳米多孔金纳入微机电系统（MEMS）和纳米机电系统（NEMS）。纳米多孔金是通过使用各种化学腐蚀剂选择性地溶解金银金属合金中的银来制备的。由此产生的纳米多孔金薄膜厚度将达到几百纳米，并且具有5到50纳米之间的孔和相互连接的韧带。纳米多孔金是一种特别理想的系统，因为它具有抗腐蚀和抗氧化性，而且因为金的表面可以被定制或功能化，对各种生物和化学试剂的吸附敏感。在本项目中制造的纳米级和微级器件将由分层悬臂梁组成，其中一层由纳米多孔金组成，另一层由各种不同的材料组成，具体取决于应用。当化学物质或生物物种与纳米多孔金接触时，悬臂梁将形成曲率，可以用各种光学方法检测。如果成功，这项研究的结果将导致一系列可扩展的方法和技术，这些方法和技术适用于使用纳米多孔金属薄膜大规模制造亚微米传感器和驱动器。这将使各种传感器和执行器的制造可以直接应用于许多不同的领域，如化学和生物传感以及MEMS和NEMS器件的驱动和控制。

The research objective of this award is the incorporation of nanoporous gold into micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS). Nanoporous gold is fabricated by selectively dissolving silver from a gold-silver metal alloy using various chemical etchants. The resulting nanoporous gold films will be several hundred nanometers in thickness and will have pores and interconnecting ligaments that are between 5 and 50 nanometers. Nanoporous gold is a particularly desirable system because of its resistance to corrosion and oxidation and also because the gold surface can be tailored or functionalized to be sensitive to adsorption by various biological and chemical agents. The nanoscale and microscale devices to be fabricated in this project will consist of layered cantilever beams, with one of the layers consisting of nanoporous gold and the other layer consisting of various different materials depending upon the application. When chemicals or biological species come into contact with the nanoporous gold, the cantilever beam will develop a curvature which can be detected using various optical methods. If successful, the results of this research will lead a set of scalable methods and techniques that are amenable to the large-scale fabrication of submicron sensors and actuators using nanoporous metal films. This will enable the fabrication of various sensors and actuators which could have direct application in many different areas such as chemical and biological sensing and actuation and control of MEMS and NEMS devices.