Spring constant and damping constant tuning of nanomechanical resonators using a single-electron transistor

By fabricating a single-electron transistor onto a mechanical system in a high magnetic field, it is shown that one can manipulate both the mechanical spring constant and damping constant by adjusting a potential of a nearby gate electrode. The spring constant effect is shown to be usable to control the resonant frequency of silicon-based nanomechanical resonators, while an additional damping constant effect is relevant for the resonators built upon carbon nanotube or similar molecular-sized materials. This could prove to be a very convenient scheme to actively control the response of nanomechanical systems for a variety of applications including radio-frequency signal processing, ultrasensitive force detection, and fundamental physics explorations.