Bistable Nanoelectromechanical Devices

A combined transmission electron microscopy-scanning tunneling microscopy (TEM-STM) technique has been used to investigate the force interactions of silicon and germanium nanowires with gold electrodes. The I(V) data obtained typically show linear behavior between the gold electrode and silicon nanowires at all contact points, whereas the linearity of I(V) curves obtained for germanium nanowires were dependent on the point of contact. Bistable silicon and germanium nanowire-based nanoelectromechanical programmable read-only memory (NEMPROM) devices were demonstrated by TEM-STM. These nonvolatile NEMPROM devices have switching potentials as low as 1 V and are highly stable making them ideal candidates for low-leakage electronic devices. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics. (DOI:10.1063/1.1751622)