Very Large Scale Integration Optomechanics: a cure for loneliness of NEMS resonators?

The first Very Large Scale Integration process with variable shape beam lithography for optomechanical devices is presented. State of the art performance was obtained with silicon microdisk resonators showing 1 million optical quality factors and 10 −17 m.Hz (−1/2) displacement resolution. Single-particle mass spectrometry could be performed with these optomechanical resonators in vacuum. The devices retained high performance when directly immersed in liquid media, allowing for biosensing experiments. These results open the door to large, dense arrays of optomechanical sensors.