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An integrated photodiode displacement readout scheme for a microelectromechanical cantilever waveguide resonator sensing platform is presented. III-V semiconductors are used to enable the monolithic integration of passive waveguides with active optical components. This work builds upon previously demonstrated results by measuring the displacement of cantilever waveguide resonators with on-chip waveguide PIN photodiodes. The on-chip integration of the readout provides an additional 70% improvement in mass sensitivity compared to off-chip photodetector designs due to measurement stability and minimized coupling loss. In addition to increased measurement stability, reduced packaging complexity is achieved due to the simplicity of the readout design. We have fabricated cantilever waveguides with integrated photodetectors and experimentally characterized these cantilever sensors with monolithically integrated PIN photodiodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the use photosensitive polyimide (PPI) in deep x-ray lithography. Characteristics of PPI; Sensitivity of PPI to x-rays; Use of PPI in micromachining technique; Resolution of PPI upon x-ray exposure.

Optical profilers are valuable tools for the characterization of microelectromechanical systems (MEMSs). They use phase sifting interferometry (PSI) or vertical scanning interferometry to measure the topography of microscale structures with nanometer resolution. However, for many emerging MEMS applications, the sample needs to be imaged while placed in a liquid or in a package with a glass window. The increased refractive index of the transparent medium degrades the interference image contrast and prevents any measurement of the sample. We report on the modification of a Veeco NT1100 optical profiler to enable PSI measurements through refractive media. This approach can be applied to any other optical profiler with PSI capability. The modification consists in replacing the original illumination source with a custom-built narrow linewidth source, which increases the coherence length of the light and the contrast of the interference image. We present measurements taken with the modified configuration on samples covered with 3 mm water or 500 mum glass, and we compare them to measurements of uncovered samples. We show that the measurement precision is only slightly reduced by the water and glass, and that it is still sufficiently high for typical MEMS applications. The described method can be readily used for measuring through other types and thicknesses of refractive materials.