Indium nitride nanowire based nanoelectromechanical systems

Nanowires are the most promising candidates in the fields of nanotechnology because they can be used for the efficient transport of electrons and phonons, and their small size and compatibility with silicon make them attractive for their integration on chips. Nanowire based Nano Electro Mechanical Systems (NEMS) with dimensions in nanoscale domain are drawing huge attention, offering high quality factors, low operation input power levels, high fundamental resonant frequencies, high integration of devices with very high sensitivities.;In this work, ANSYS simulations are carried out to determine the resonant frequencies of microcantilevers with various shapes and dimensions, microcantilever tip deflections and the shift in the microcantilever resonant frequency due to mass loading. The simulation results pertaining to the microcantilever resonant frequency and its shift due to mass attachments are closely matched with analytical and experimental results. High resonant frequencies with high sensitivities can be predicted from the nano devices.;This work presents the fabrication process development of Indium Nitride (InN) nanowire based NEMS devices such as nanoresonators and nanocantilevers. Two approaches were implemented for the nanoresonator fabrication and the mechanical properties of the InN NWs are extracted using 3-point bending technique. A significant breakthrough in the development of the controlled growth of Indium Nitride (InN) nanowires has been achieved through this work. For the first time ever, we report the guided growth of InN nanowires between the silicon dioxide pillars, grown by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) technique. This controlled growth can lead to the development of many nanowire based devices such as nanoresonators and nanocantilevers. Also, high integration of the high density InN nanowire arrays can be achieved from this growth. The resonant frequencies of V-shaped and W-shaped InN nanowire based nanocantilevers are obtained by performing their harmonic analysis using ANSYS.