title: Internal Electron Tunneling Enabled Ultrasensitive Position/Force Peapod Sensors.
abstract: The electron quantum tunneling effect guarantees the ultrahigh spatial resolution of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), but there have been no other significant applications of this effect after the invention of STM. Here we report the implementation of electron-tunneling-based high sensitivity transducers using a peapod B4C nanowire, where discrete Ni6Si2B nanorods are embedded in the nanowire in a peapod form. The deformation of the nanowire provides a higher order scaling effect between conductivity and deformation strain, thus allowing the potentials of position and force sensing at the picoscale.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina , 300 Main Street, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, United States.|College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology , Hangzhou 310014, China.
authors.forename: Xinyong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tao
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University , East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1226, United States.
authors.forename: Zheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zurich , CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Bradley J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University , East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1226, United States.
authors.forename: Gautham
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Dharuman
authors.affiliation: College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology , Hangzhou 310014, China.
authors.forename: Wenkui
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University , East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1226, United States.
authors.forename: Lixin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina , 300 Main Street, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, United States.|Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia , Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4746, United States.
authors.forename: Xiaodong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
keywords: Nanowire; boron carbide; internal tunneling; nanoelectromechanical system; peapod structure