Dr. Gajendra Shekhawat

The article Transistor-Cantilever Combo Detects Biomolecules With High Sensitivity said

Microcantilevers, tiny devices that resemble a diving board, show great promise for detecting rare disease-related molecules that might be present in biological samples. Indeed, researchers have developed several prototype devices that measure the nanoscale bending that occurs when such a molecule binds to an antibody or complementary nucleic acid sequence attached to the cantilevers. In most cases, these devices have successfully used lasers and other optical systems to measure cantilever bending, but such optical methods are likely to be difficult to manufacture and have limited use with turbid or opaque biological samples.
 
To get around these potential limitations, a team led by Vinayak Dravid, Ph.D., and Gajendra Shekhawat, Ph.D., colleagues at Northwestern University, coupled a microcantilever with a metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOSFET, to yield a device that generates a direct electrical signal whenever the cantilever bends in response to biomolecule binding. This new device, note the researchers, can be mass-produced using standard computer chip design and manufacturing techniques.

Dr. Gajendra Shekhawat is Research Assistant Professor, Northwestern Institute for Nanotechnology, and Manager, Nanoscale Integrated Fabrication, Testing and Instrumentation User Facility.
 
Gajendra coauthored Nanometer-scale mechanical imaging of aluminum damascene interconnect structures in a low-dielectric-constant polymer in Journal of Applied Physics, Impedance analysis of self-assembled naphthalene disulfide monolayer on gold using external redox probes in Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Evidence for the formation of ordered layers on SeS2 treated GaAs(110) using atomic force microscopy in Journal of Applied Physics, and Manganese doped zinc sulphide nanoparticles by aqueous method in Applied Physics Letters.
 
His areas of professional interest are CMOS and Cantilever Based Nano and multifunctional sensors, System on a chip, Biosensors, Molecular Interconnects and self assembly, Molecular devices, VLSI Design and Fabrication, Metrology development, MEMS design, Modeling and simulation, Micromachining (surface, bulk and bonding), Microdevice testing, Integration of microdevices with ICs, New materials and processes for MEMS; Mechatronics, System & Control, Sensors & Instruments, Measurements, Signal detection, estimation and processing, Electronic circuits, and self assembled monolayers for interconnect applications.
 
Gajendra earned a Ph.D. in Material Science from Rajasthan University, India in 1996.