Piezoresistive force sensor and thermal actuators usage as applications to nanosystems manipulation: Design, simulations, technology and experiments

For properties characterization of nanostructured materials and simultaneously to predict their reliability a tensile testing system consisting of a thermal actuator and a lateral nano-Newton force piezoresistive sensor is presented. The implementation of a piezoresistive load sensor in a MEMS-based tensile testing system can be regarded as an innovative and ultrasensitive method to continuously observe the specimen deformation while simultaneously measuring the applied load electronically with nano-Newton resolution. The primary technique that we have used for the fabrication of these systems is Bonding and Deep Reactive Ion Etching (BDRIE) applied on SOI wafers.