Audio mixing in a tri-port nano-electro-mechanical device

Defoort, M. and Lulla, K. J. and Heron, J. -S. and Bourgeois, Olivier and Collin, Eddy and Pistolesi, F. (2011) Audio mixing in a tri-port nano-electro-mechanical device. Applied Physics Letters, 99 (23). ISSN 0003-6951

Abstract

We report on experiments performed on a cantilever-based tri-port nano-electro-mechanical (NEMS) device. Two ports are used for actuation and detection through the magnetomotive scheme, while the third port is a capacitively coupled gate electrode. By applying a low frequency voltage signal on the gate, we demonstrate mixing in the mechanical response of the device, even for low magnetomotive drives without resorting to conduction measurements through the NEMS. The technique can thus be used, in particular, in the linear regime as an alternative to nonlinear mixing for normal conducting devices. An analytic theory is presented reproducing the data without free parameters.