Impact of transduction scaling laws on nanoelectromechanical systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how scaling laws affect nanoelectromechanical systems, revealing that fringing fields enhance electrical forces and stability, enabling high-frequency graphene-based resonators beyond 40 GHz.

Contribution

It demonstrates that electrostatics do not limit downscaling, showing nanosystems can outperform microscale devices and enabling ultra-high-frequency resonators.

Findings

Fringing fields significantly increase electrical forces.

Nanosystems outperform microscale counterparts in stability.

Graphene-based resonators beyond 40 GHz are feasible.

Abstract

We study the electromechanical transduction in nanoelectromechanical actuators and show that the differences in scaling for electrical and mechanical effects lead to an overall non-trivial scaling behavior. In particular, the previously neglected fringing fields considerably increase electrical forces and improve the stability of nanoscale actuators. This shows that electrostatics does not pose any limitations to downscaling of electromechanical systems, in fact in several respects, nanosystems outperform their microscale counterparts. As a specific example, we consider in-plane actuation of ultrathin slabs and show that devices consisting of a few layers of graphene are feasible, implying that electromechanical resonators operating beyond 40 GHz are possible with currently available technology.