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Cooling and self-oscillation in a nanotube electromechanical resonator

Nature Physics volume 16, pages 32–37 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Nanomechanical resonators are used with great success to couple mechanical motion to other degrees of freedom, such as photons, spins and electrons1,2. The motion of a mechanical eigenmode can be efficiently cooled into the quantum regime using photons2,3,4, but not other degrees of freedom. Here, we demonstrate a simple yet powerful method for cooling, amplification and self-oscillation using electrons. This is achieved by applying a constant (d.c.) current of electrons through a suspended nanotube in a dilution refrigerator. We demonstrate cooling to 4.6 ± 2.0 quanta of vibrations. We also observe self-oscillation, which can lead to prominent instabilities in the electron transport through the nanotube. We attribute the origin of the observed cooling and self-oscillation to an electrothermal effect. This work shows that electrons may become a useful resource for cooling the mechanical vibrations of nanoscale systems into the quantum regime.

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Fig. 1: Characterization of the nanotube electromechanical resonator.
Fig. 2: Conductance instabilities.
Fig. 3: Self-oscillation at Vg = −616 mV.
Fig. 4: Cooling at Vg = −943 mV.

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Data availability

The data represented in Figs. 1b, 2a, 3 and 4 are available as Supplementary Data 1–4. All other data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Dykman, F. Pistolesi and D. Chang for discussions. This work is supported by ERC advanced grant number 692876, the Cellex Foundation, the CERCA Programme, AGAUR (grant number 2017SGR1664), Severo Ochoa (grant number SEV-2015-0522), MICINN grant number RTI2018-097953-B-I00 and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional. We thank B. Thibeault at UCSB for fabrication help.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: C. Urgell, W. Yang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICFO - Institut De Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Castelldefels, Spain

    C. Urgell, W. Yang, S. L. De Bonis, C. Samanta & A. Bachtold

  2. Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, CSIC and BIST, Campus UAB, Bellaterra, Spain

    M. J. Esplandiu

  3. Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Palaiseau, France

    Q. Dong & Y. Jin

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  1. C. Urgell
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Contributions

W.Y. fabricated the devices with the support of C.U. and M.J.E. in the growth. C.U. and W.Y. carried out the measurements. C.U., W.Y., S.L.B., C.S., Q.D. and Y.J developed the detection circuit. C.U., W.Y. and A.B. analysed the data and wrote the manuscript. A.B. supervised the work.

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Correspondence to W. Yang or A. Bachtold.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–8, methods and discussion, and references.

Supplementary Data 1

Source data for Fig. 1b.

Supplementary Data 2

Source data for Fig. 2a.

Supplementary Data 3

Source data for Fig. 3.

Supplementary Data 4

Source data for Fig. 4.

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Urgell, C., Yang, W., De Bonis, S.L. et al. Cooling and self-oscillation in a nanotube electromechanical resonator. Nat. Phys. 16, 32–37 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0682-6

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