In modern electronics, components are being designed on increasingly tiny scales. As we approach dimensions of one billionth of a metre the nanometre scale it is now appropriate to talk about nanoelectronics rather than microelectronics.
In order to make such ultrasmall structures, researchers need to manipulate both the architecture and the electronic properties of very small volumes of matter. This can be achieved mechanically using atomic force microscopy, in which single atoms are positioned in a desired geometry, or chemically through self-assembly methods.
Now, however, a new type of device in which electron transport is manipulated by both electrical and mechanical means has been built by Dominik Scheible, Artur Erbe and Robert Blick at the Center for NanoScience at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich (D Scheible et al. 2002 New Journal of Physics 4 86.186.7).
This represents the next step towards one of the ultimate goals in miniaturized electronic components the first nanomechanically assisted single-electron transistor.
In the January issue of Physics World, Mats Jonson and Robert Shekhter in the Department of Applied Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden explain the ideas behind the Munich team’s research.
