Design, Fabrication and Operation of a Micromachined Tunneling Control Unit

Abstract

We developed a micro tunneling unit, a device which can control the magnitude of a tunneling current that passes through a vacuum gap by adjusting the gap distance with a microactuator. Since the unit has a tunneling tip in the direction lateral to the substrate, we call it a lateral tunneling unit (LTU). Because of its layout and fabrication process, the LTU is suitable for integrating with each other or with other microstructures on a single substrate. This paper describes the design, the fabrication, and an experimental result which shows LTU's ability to control tunneling current.