Around 1500 Leonardo da Vinci designed the first mechanical calculator connecting a number of teethed wheels for simple adding operations. Since then mechanical systems have become a major part of the later industrial revolutions with an abundance of machines in our everyday lives. Only with the advent of semiconductor electronics, however, did microstructuring techniques become available to realize mechanical systems with dimensions below 100 microns. With most recent structure sizes now reaching the limit of a few nanometers, suspended nanostructures that couple mechanical with electronic motion have been constructed. Moreover, novel lithographic techniques have enabled the investigation of transport across hybrid structures such as. suspended carbon nanotubes or flexible molecular bridges connected to mesoscopic leads. In this presentation I will discuss the latest status and trends of nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS). A multitude of applications for NEMS are now within reach, ranging from high-frequency filters and switches in signal processing circuits, to ultra-sensitive sensors. In particular the development of mass sensors and scanning probe microscopy will be spurred by nano-mechanical systems. Considering that mechanical resonance frequencies of 1 GHz and more have already been achieved, these devices will be extremely sensitive and will offer high data acquisition rates. On a fundamental level NEMS enable the investigation of electron-phonon coupling in the absolute limit via, for example, single electrons interacting with single (quantized) phonons, the study of single electrons being shuttled via mechanical motion, and the manipulation of single molecules with nano-mechanical tweezers.
Around 1500 Leonardo da Vinci designed the first mechanical calculator connecting a number of teethed wheels for simple adding operations. Since then mechanical systems have become a major part of the later industrial revolutions with an abundance of machines in our everyday lives. Only with the advent of semiconductor electronics, however, did microstructuring techniques become available to realize mechanical systems with dimensions below 100 microns. With most recent structure sizes now reaching the limit of a few nanometers, suspended nanostructures that couple mechanical with electronic motion have been constructed. Moreover, novel lithographic techniques have enabled the investigation of transport across hybrid structures such as. suspended carbon nanotubes or flexible molecular bridges connected to mesoscopic leads. In this presentation I will discuss the latest status and trends of nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS). A multitude of applications for NEMS are now within reach, ranging from high-frequency filters and switches in signal processing circuits, to ultra-sensitive sensors. In particular the development of mass sensors and scanning probe microscopy will be spurred by nano-mechanical systems. Considering that mechanical resonance frequencies of 1 GHz and more have already been achieved, these devices will be extremely sensitive and will offer high data acquisition rates. On a fundamental level NEMS enable the investigation of electron-phonon coupling in the absolute limit via, for example, single electrons interacting with single (quantized) phonons, the study of single electrons being shuttled via mechanical motion, and the manipulation of single molecules with nano-mechanical tweezers.
