The transport properties of a carbon nanotube (CNT) capacitively coupled to a molecule vibrating along one of its librational modes are studied and its transport properties analyzed in the presence of a scanning tunnel microscope tip. We evaluate the linear charge and thermal conductances of the system and its thermopower. They are dominated by position-dependent Franck-Condon factors, governed by a position-dependent effective coupling constant peaked at the molecule position. Both conductance and thermopower allow us to extract some information on the position of the molecule along the CNT. Crucially, however, thermopower also sheds light on the vibrational level spacing, allowing a more complete characterization of the molecule to be obtained, even in the linear regime.
MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) made of heterostructures of crystalline oxide materials with targeted physical properties may be applied as sensors having different integrated functionalities. In this work, we explore the feasibility of manganite thin film based epitaxial MEMS for thermometric micromechanical sensing. We investigate the mechanical properties of La1−xSrxMnO3, with x ≈ 1/3, freestanding microbridges as a function of temperature for applications in the field of micromechanical temperature sensors.
High‐sensitivity nanomechanical sensors are mostly based on silicon technology and related materials. The use of functional materials, such as complex oxides having strong interplay between structural, electronic, and magnetic properties, may open possibilities for developing new mechanical transduction schemes and for further enhancement of the device performances. The integration of these materials into micro/nano‐electro‐mechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS) is still at its very beginning and critical basic aspects related to the stress state and the quality factors of mechanical resonators made from epitaxial oxide thin films need to be investigated. Here, suspended micro‐bridges are realized from single‐crystal thin films of (La0.7,Sr0.3)MnO3 (LSMO), a prototypical complex oxide showing ferromagnetic ground state at room temperature. These devices are characterized in terms of resonance frequency, stress state, and Q‐factor. LSMO resonators are highly stressed, with a maximum value of ≈260 MPa. The temperature dependence of their mechanical resonance is discussed considering both thermal strain and the temperature‐dependent Young's modulus. The measured Q‐factors reach few tens of thousands at room temperature, with indications of further improvements by optimizing the fabrication protocols. These results demonstrate that complex oxides are suitable to realize high Q‐factor mechanical resonators, paving the way toward the development of full‐oxide MEMS/NEMS sensors.
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