1998/04/30 by A. Isacsson, L.Y. Gorelik, L. Y. Gorelik +6 · 5 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Carbon Nanotubes in Composites #Chemical and Physical Properties of Materials #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/s0921-4526(98)00463-3
published as Physica B 255, 150 (1998). · 24 pages, 8 figures. elsart.cls required; corrected typos and minor changes to the text
arxiv created 1998/06/08 · openalex publication_date 1998/12/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study a simple model of a self-assembled, room temperature Coulomb-blockade nanostructure containing a metallic nanocrystal or grain connected by soft molecular links to two metallic electrodes. Self-excitation of periodic grain vibrations at 10 - 100 GHz is shown to be possible for a sufficiently large bias voltage leading to a novel `shuttle mechanism' of discrete charge transfer and a current through the nanostructure proportional to the vibration frequency. For the case of weak electromechanical coupling an analytical approach is developed which together with Monte Carlo simulations shows that the shuttle instability for structures with high junction resistances leads to hysteresis in the current - voltage characteristics.