Broadband acoustical tuning of nano-electromechanical sensors

For a variety of applications in integrated communication and sensor devices nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS) present a new generation of high frequency components. Up to now conventional excitation mechanisms for NEMS are based either on high magnetic (magnetomotive method) or electric (electromotive method) fields which limits the use of NEMS. We present experiments utilizing a surface acoustic wave (SAW) transducer on GaAs to excite nanomechanical resonators operating at frequencies up to 300 MHz. We show that via SAW full control over the fundamental properties of the resonator sensor is achieved.