Quantum Tunneling in Mesoscopic Electromechanical Transducers

The paper presents the simulation approach to some quantum transport effects, which arise in mesoscopic electromechanical transducers such as two-electrode tunneling transducer. The tunneling transducers are advanced nanoelectromechanical systems, which can be used for motion detection at nanoscale. It is very promising to adopt tunneling transducers as sensitive elements of the inertial microelectromechanical (or nanoelectromechanical) systems. In theory, their extremely high sensitivity is limited only by fundamental quantum relations. We propose theoretical model of the transducer based on the transfer-matrix formalism in this work. We provide the detailed derivation of transfer-matrix. Scattering potential of the transducer is a stepped representation of the electron potential energy. In addition, by using well-known formula proposed by L. Esaki and R. Tsu for finite superlattices we apply the numerical procedure for current density evaluation. The proposed model of the two-electrode mesoscopic tunneling transducer could be a useful tool for quantum transport simulation in high-performance nanoelectromechanical systems and advanced nanomaterials such as metal-polymer composites.