Study on cantilever NEMS switches appears in Nature Communications
Stochastic switching of cantilever motion Nanoscale mechanical switches can utilize the noise from their environment to detect small signals. This is demonstrated by researchers at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at the TU Delft in an article which appeared in Nature Communications on 31 October. In engineering, noise and nonlinear behaviour are in general unwanted and tend to be avoided. The article demonstrates how these features can be exploited beneficially in nanoscale mechanical systems. The researchers performed experiments with tiny ultra-flexible springboards, known as cantilevers...