Search for: All records

We report on the experimental demonstration of aluminum scandium nitride (AlScN)-on-cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC) Lamb wave resonators (LWRs) realized via microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology, operating at high temperature (T) up to T = 800 °C, while retaining robust electromechanical resonances at ∼27 MHz and good quality factor of Q ≈ 900 even at 800 °C. Measured resonances exhibit clear consistency and stability during heating and cooling processes, validating the AlScN-on-SiC LWRs can operate at high T up to 800 °C without noticeable degradation in moderate vacuum (∼20 mTorr). Even after undergoing four complete thermal cycles (heating from 23 to 800 °C and then cooling down to 23 °C), the devices exhibit robust resonance behavior, suggesting excellent stability and suitability for high-temperature applications. Q starts to decline as the temperature exceeds 400 °C, which can be attributed to energy dissipation mechanisms stemming from thermoelastic damping and intrinsic material loss originating from phonon–phonon interactions. 

Parametric amplification of ultrasmall signals from electromechanical transducers directly in the mechanical domain, prior to electrical readout, is an intriguing challenge and is important for both scientific measurements and technologies utilizing micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS). Here, we report on parametric amplification of aluminum nitride (AlN) multimode NEMS resonators (with broad intrinsic dynamic ranges up to 90 dB) for enabling detection of their thermomechanical resonances in both optical and electrical readout schemes simultaneously. The experiments demonstrate that, upon parametric pumping, the electrically transduced thermomechanical motions experience significant amplification, surpassing the extrinsic electronic noise level, while still below the parametric pumping threshold. We achieve noise matching that enables room temperature force sensitivity of 0.46 fN/Hz1/2. We observe high parametric gain up to 650, accompanied by a strong boost (over 3.5×) in the effective quality factor (Qeff, from 9000 to 32 000). These findings underscore the utilities of parametric amplification in noise matching and improving force sensitivity for NEMS transducers and their emerging applications. 

Phononic waveguides (PnWGs) are devices with rationally designed periodic structures to manipulate mechanical oscillations and to engineer and control the propagation of acoustic waves, thus allowing for frequency and band selection of wave transmission and routing, promising for both classical and quantum transduction on chip-scale platforms with various constituent materials of interest. They can be incorporated into both electromechanical and optomechanical signal transduction schemes. Here, we present an overview of emerging micro/nanoscale PnWGs and offer perspectives for future. We evaluate the typical structural designs, frequency scaling, and phononic band structures of the PnWGs. Material choices, fabrication techniques, and characterization schemes are discussed based on different PnWG designs. For classical transduction schemes, an all-phononic integrated circuit perspective is proposed. Toward emerging quantum applications, the potential of utilizing PnWGs as universal interfaces and transduction channels has been examined. We envision PnWGs with extraordinary propagation properties, such as nonreciprocity and active tunability, can be realized with unconventional design strategies (e.g., inverse design) and advanced materials (e.g., van der Waals layered crystals), opening opportunities in both classical and quantum signal transduction schemes. 

We report on the experimental demonstration of high-performance suspended channel transistors with single- and bilayer (1L and 2L) molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), and on operating them as vibrating channel transistors (VCTs) and exploiting their built-in dynamic electromechanical coupling to read out picoampere (pA) transconduction current directly at the vibrating tones, without frequency conversion or down-mixing, for picometer (pm)-scale motion detection at room temperature. The 1L- and 2L-MoS2 VCTs exhibit excellent n-type transistor behavior with high mobility [150 cm2/(V·s)] and small subthreshold swing (98 mV/dec). Their resonance motions are probed by directly measuring the small-signal drain-source currents (iD). Electromechanical characteristics of the devices are extracted from the measured iD, yielding resonances at f0 = 31.83 MHz with quality factor Q = 117 and f0 = 21.43 MHz with Q = 110 for 1L- and 2L-MoS2 VCTs, respectively. The 2L-MoS2 VCT demonstrates excellent current and displacement sensitivity (Si1/2 = 2 pA/Hz1/2 and Sx1/2 = 0.5 pm/Hz1/2). We demonstrate f0 tuning by controlling gate voltage VG and achieve frequency tunability Δf0/f0 ≈ 8% and resonance frequency change Δf0/ΔVG ≈ 0.53 kHz/mV. This study helps pave the way to realizing ultrasensitive self-transducing 2D nanoelectromechanical systems at room temperature, in all-electronic configurations, for on-chip applications.