Closed-loop Control of Silicon Nanotweezers for Improvement of Sensitivity to Mechanical Stiffness Measurement and Bio-Sensing on DNA Molecules

Nicolas Lafitte (1) , Yassine Haddab (2) , Yann Le Gorrec (2) , Hervé Guillou (1) , Momoko Kumemura (1) , Laurent Jalabert (1) , Hiroyuki Fujita (1) , Dominique Collard (1)

1 LIMMS - Laboratory for Integrated Micro Mechatronics Systems
2 FEMTO-ST - Franche-Comté Électronique Mécanique, Thermique et Optique - Sciences et Technologies (UMR 6174)

In this work we show that implementation of closed loop control to silicon nanotweezers improves the sensitivity of the tool for mechanical characterizations of biological molecules. Micromachined tweezers have already been used for the characterizations of mechanical properties of DNA molecules as well as for the sensing of enzymatic reactions on DNA bundle. However the resolution of the experiments does not allow the sensing on single molecules. Hereafter we show theoretically and experimentally that, reducing the resonance frequency of the system by the implementation of a state feedback, the sensitivity to stiffness variation is enhanced. Such improvement leads to better resolution for detection of enzymatic reactions on DNA.

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Nicolas Lafitte, Yassine Haddab, Yann Le Gorrec, Hervé Guillou, Momoko Kumemura, et al.. Closed-loop Control of Silicon Nanotweezers for Improvement of Sensitivity to Mechanical Stiffness Measurement and Bio-Sensing on DNA Molecules. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS'13., Nov 2013, Tokyo, Japan. ⟨hal-00912496⟩