Resonant Nanoelectromechanical Systems (NEMS): Progress and Emerging Frontiers

Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), marked by genuinely nanoscale feature sizes, represent new possibilities for devices and systems in the regime of salient size reduction beyond the established mainstream microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Amongst the families of NEMS being actively engineered for various applications, resonant NEMS that operate in their engineerable vibrational modes, are the workhorses for delivering some of the most compelling progress and applications of NEMS today, and serve as a backbone for framing the future horizons of NEMS, in both fundamental scientific explorations and technological adventures. In this paper, we present a brief overview of the development of resonant NEMS, describe some of the recent advances enabled by engineering low-dimensional nanostructures of new crystalline materials into functional devices and by exploring NEMS-centric device physics in such platforms, and discuss on emerging frontiers and challenges that continue to inspire advances in NEMS.