Dear Colleagues,


I am not involved in NEMS/MEMS research but has been very excited of NEMS
area after reading several review papers in popular science press. I was
trying to understand an importance of atomic structure in NEMS. My
impression is that when dimensions of NEMS devices approach the size of
several dozens of atoms across, surface effects including adsorbates,
point defects inside the material and mechanical energy dissipative
processes will influence in substantial way the mechanical energy
dissipation and other characteristics of NEMS.

When I looked at more specialized literature I found that most of
MEMS/NEMS modeling was done by finite-element methods. There are couple of
papers trying to marry finite-elements with atomistic theory but they
address mainly classical mechanical problems such as crack propagation.

I would like to hear from experimentalists and NEMS practitioners what are
in their view the challenges to atomic scale theory that can only be
addressed by using atomic scale modeling techniques such as molecular
dynamics or first-principles quantum mechanics.

Thanks,

Ivan Oleynik

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Ivan I. Oleynik                       E-mail : oleynik@chuma.cas.usf.edu
Department of Physics
University of South Florida
4202 East Fowler Avenue                  Tel : (813) 974-8186
Tampa, Florida 33620-5700                Fax : (813) 974-5813
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