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Progress in silicon technology has promoted NEMS sensors as viable and highly sensitive candidates for gravimetric applications such as gas sensing, mass spectrometry and biochemical analysis [1]. The high sensitivity to mass is related to the small dimensions and intrinsic mass of the NEMS themselves, which results in resonant frequencies in the 10MHz-to-1GHz range and drive voltages reaching 1V to 10V. Such a combination of frequencies and voltages is a challenge for the driving electronics. Although several promising approaches using NEMS/CMOS co-integration have been recently published [2], many experiments in the field are currently using discrete electronic boards and specialized lab instruments. To respond to size, power and cost demands, an IC implementing the most critical parts of the full system is described hereafter.

We present a completely new concept of miniaturized gyroscopes based on Si nanowire piezo-resistive detection. This concept enables to realize extremely compact single-chip 3D gyroscopes while maintaining high performances: performances for consumer applications are obtained with a size of the mechanical part of 0.5mm2/axis, which is 2 to 4 times smaller than state of the art gyroscopes. Moreover the extremely high sensitivity obtained with this concept enables to implement designs with high frequency mismatch between drive and sense mechanical modes, which implies high linear range in open-loop detection, large bandwidth, lower sensitivity to technological variations and low resolution dependency on sense quality factor. We present more precisely first results obtained for Z gyroscopes which have resolution below 0.05°/s/√Hz.

Improvement of therapies and diagnosis methods require the acquisition of clinical data with optimal accuracy and reliability. Combination of recent progresses in SOI micro machining and telemetry lead to the development of a new miniature pressure sensor acquisition microsystem to be inserted as close as possible to the organ or the targeted area. Moreover a wireless RF powering and data transmission has been optimized in order to allow a non-invasive acquisition chain.