Micro and Nano Electromechanical Systems based on Gallium Nitride – NEMS-GAN

MEMS successes are today based on top-down microfabrication and mostly silicon material. NEMS miniaturized mechanical structures offer promising routes for increasing devices sensistivity. However, many sensors markets in industry, exploration, and defense cannot use current MEMS/NEMS technologies because or performance degradation in harsh environments: high temperatures, high vibrations/accelerations, radiations, or corrosive media. In this context, NEMSGAN proposal aims at investigating the use of novel III-N materials and demonstrate the first nitride NEMS integrated inertial sensors. These devices would withstand harsh environments in particular temperatures from 500K to 800K due to epitaxial nitrides robustness and specific refractory technologies developped for the transducers. Nitride NEMS will also take advantage of novel piezo-response phenomena for improved transducers response. They will combine nanostructures to micro-sized moving parts for optimizing the signal-to-noise ratio, having low power consumption and a high measuring bandwidth.