Status and prospects of micro- and nanoelectromechanics

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) are devices that display the most intense development in modern microelectronics. At the moment, however, the majority of electronic engineers and users of hi-tech devices do not possess sufficient general information about this new direction in microelectronics. The present paper describes the current status of this direction, numerous possible applications, and prospects of its further development, including the transition to the nanometer range and creation of nanoelectronic elements. Specific features of operation of some particular MEMS devices, their characteristics, and areas and scales of applications are considered.     

Modelling of Quantum Electromechanical Systems

We discuss methods for numerically solving the generalized Master equation GME which governs the time-evolution of the reduced density matrix ρ of a mechanically movable mesoscopic device in a dissipative environment. As a specific example, we consider the quantum shuttle—a generic quantum nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS). When expressed in the oscillator basis, the stationary limit of the GME becomes a large linear non-sparse matrix problem (characteristic size larger than 10⁴× 10⁴) which however, as we show, can be treated using the Arnoldi iteration scheme. The numerical results are interpreted with the help of Wigner functions, and we compute the current and the noise in a few representative cases.