Real-time sensing with multiplexed optomechanical resonators

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.