This paper presents the development of a novel micro force sensor based on a laterally movable gate field-effect transistor (LMGFET). A precise electrical model is proposed for the performance evaluation of small-scale LMGFET devices and exhibits improved accuracy in comparison with previous models. A novel sandwich structure consisting of a gold cross-axis decoupling gate array layer and two soft photoresistive SU-8 layers is utilized. With the proposed dual-differential sensing configuration, the output current of the LMGFET lateral operation under vertical interference is largely eliminated, and the relative output error of the proposed sensor decreases from 4.53% (traditional differential configuration) to 0.01%. A practicable fabrication process is also developed and simulated for the proposed sensor. The proposed LMGFET-based force sensor exhibits a sensitivity of 4.65 µA·nN−1, which is comparable with vertically movable gate field-effect transistor (VMGFET) devices, but has an improved nonlinearity of 0.78% and a larger measurement range of ±5.10 µN. These analyses provide a comprehensive design optimization of the electrical and structural parameters of LMGFET devices and demonstrate the proposed sensor’s excellent force-sensing potential for biomedical micromanipulation applications.

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology has been extensively explored for wireless communication, sensors, microfluidics, photonics, and quantum information processing. However, due to fabrication issues, the frequencies of SAW devices are typically limited to within a few gigahertz, which severely restricts their applications in 5G communication, precision sensing, photonics, and quantum control. To solve this critical problem, we propose a hybrid strategy that integrates a nanomanufacturing process (i.e., nanolithography) with a LiNbO3/SiO2/SiC heterostructure and successfully achieve a record-breaking frequency of about 44 GHz for SAW devices, in addition to large electromechanical coupling coefficients of up to 15.7%. We perform a theoretical analysis and identify the guided higher order wave modes generated on these slow-on-fast SAW platforms. To demonstrate the superior sensing performance of the proposed ultra-high-frequency SAW platforms, we perform micro-mass sensing and obtain an extremely high sensitivity of approximately 33151.9 MHz·mm²·μg⁻¹, which is about 10¹¹ times higher than that of a conventional quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) and about 4000 times higher than that of a conventional SAW device with a frequency of 978 MHz.