Nanomechanical Lithium Niobate on Silicon Resonators for Single Molecule Sensing

Nanomechanical systems offer exceptional sensitivity for inertial mass spectrometry and quantum sensing. Sensing applications in single-cell proteomics and metabolomics would require high frequency and quality factor mechanical resonators multiplexed en masse. In this work, we demonstrate the transduction of GHz silicon nanomechanical resonators via mechanical coupling to a thin-film lithium niobate (LN) mode. Strain in the LN is read out piezoelectrically through a high kinetic inductance frequency-tunable superconducting microwave resonator. By implementing an acoustic radiation shield, we can observe high intrinsic mechanical quality factors for silicon modes which have very low effective masses. This technology offers a promising path towards high resolution scalable mass sensing.