Charge sensitivity enhancement via mechanical oscillation in suspended carbon nanotube devices

Single electron transistors (SETs) fabricated from single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) can be operated as highly sensitive charge detectors reaching sensitivity levels comparable to metallic radio frequency SETs (rf-SETs). Here, we demonstrate how the charge sensitivity of the device can be improved by using the mechanical oscillations of a single-walled carbon nanotube quantum dot. To optimize the charge sensitivity δQ, we drive the mechanical resonator far into the nonlinear regime and bias it to an operating point where the mechanical third order nonlinearity is canceled out. This way we enhance δQ, from 6 μe/(Hz)(1/2) for the static case to 0.97 μe/(Hz)(1/2) at a probe frequency of ∼1.3 kHz.