A Picowatt Powered Carbon-Nanotube-Based Thermal Convective Motion Sensor

We report a thermal convective motion sensor with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as sensing elements. This sensor uses CNT bundles manipulated by dielectrophresis as both, a heater and thermal detector. This sensor can respond to sinusoidal vibrations, and requires only several picowatts to operate. We have thus far demonstrated that this CNT-based motion sensor can detect linear acceleration as low as 0.02 m/s, and respond to at least 10Hz vibrations.