Acoustically driven NEMS resonators

Mechanical systems scaled down to the nanometer range promise to offer novel devices for information processing and sensor applications. As the dimensions of these systems lie well below 100 nm the eigenfrequencies recently crossed the 1 GHz barrier. For a further increase of the eigenfrequencies an appropriate driving mechanism, able to excite this systems far into the GHz regime, is needed. Conventional techniques rely on electrostatic or magnetic forces, which are getting weak compared to e.g. surface tension on the nanometer scale. Here we want to investigate the possibility to use a mechanical excitation scheme, namely surface acoustic waves (SAW), for these small devices. We discuss different approaches to drive nanomechanical systems (NEMS) by resonant acoustic excitation.