Modeling and simulation of an ultrasensitive electron tunneling position/force nanosensor

We report the theoretical characterization of an ultrasensitive electron tunneling nanosensor with an alignment-free inter-segment nanogap embedded.

Internal Electron Tunneling Enabled Ultrasensitive Position/Force Peapod Sensors

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.