Spin-controlled mechanics in nanoelectromechanical systems

We consider a dc-electronic tunneling transport through a carbon nanotube suspended between normal-metal source and arbitrarily spin-polarized drain lead in the presence of an external magnetic field. We show that magnetomotive coupling between electrical current through the nanotube and its mechanical vibrations may lead to an electromechanical instability and give an onset of self-excited mechanical vibrations depending on spin polarization of the drain lead and frequency of vibrations. The self-excitation mechanism is based on correlation between the occupancy of quantized Zeeman-split electronic states in the nanotube and the direction of velocity of its mechanical motion, It is an effective gating effect by the presence of electron in the spin state which, through the Coulomb blockade, permits tunneling of electron to the drain predominantly only during a particular phase of mechanical vibration thus coherently changing mechanical momentum and leading into instability if mechanical damping is overcome. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.