A nano-shuttle consisting of two metallic islands connected in series and integrated between two contacts is studied. We evaluate the electron transport through the system in the presence of a source-drain voltage with and without an RF excitation. W
e evaluate the response of the system in terms of the net direct current generated by the mechanical motion of the oscillators. An introduction to the charge stability diagram is given in terms of electrochemical potentials and mechanical displacements. The low capacitance of the islands allows the observation of Coulomb blockade even at room temperature. Using radio frequency excitations, the nonlinear dynamics of the system is studied. The oscillators can be tuned to unstable regions where mechanically assisted transfer of electrons can further increase the amplitude of motion, resulting of a net energy being pumped into the system. The instabilities can be exploited to parametrically amplify the response to an excitation, suggesting a practical scheme for detection of mechanical motion of nanoscale objects.
We present a calculation of the wavevector-dependent subband level splitting from spin-orbit coupling in Si/SiGe quantum wells. We first use the effective-mass approach, where the splittings are parameterized by separating contributions from the Rash
ba and Dresselhaus terms. We then determine the parameters by fitting tight-binding numerical results obtained using the quantitative nanoelectronic modeling tool, NEMO-3D. We describe the relevant parameters as a function of applied electric field and well width in our numerical simulations. For a silicon membrane, we find the bulk Rashba parameter to be linear in field, $alpha = alpha^1E_z$ with $alpha^1 simeq 2times$ 10 $^{-5}$nm$^{-2}$. The dominant contribution to the spin-orbit splitting is from Dresselhaus-type terms, and the magnitude for a typical flat SiGe/Si/SiGe quantum well can be as high as 1$mu$eV.
