Shuttle Instability in Self-Assembled Coulomb Blockade Nanostructures
Abstract
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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9804281,
title = {Shuttle Instability in Self-Assembled Coulomb Blockade Nanostructures},
author = {A. Isacsson and L. Y. Gorelik and M. V. Voinova and B. Kasemo and R. I. Shekhter and M. Jonson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9804281},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
24 pages, 8 figures. elsart.cls required; corrected typos and minor changes to the text