Silicon nanotweezers: A new biophysical tool for molecular experimentation

We describe a MEMS-based method for the biomechanical characterization of filamentary molecules. The system consists of a pair of electrostatically actuated silicon nanotweezers and a differential capacitive sensor that is connected to the moving tip of the tweezers. With such a tool, we achieved sub-nanometer displacement resolution (around 0.2 nm), detected the trapping of DNA nanowires and measured the evolution of their biomechanical characteristics through the shift of the resonant frequency.