One of the challenges
of nanoelectromechanical systems
(NEMS) is
the effective transduction of the tiny resonators. Vertical structures,
such as nanomechanical pillar resonators, which are exploited in optomechanics,
acoustic metamaterials, and nanomechanical sensing, are particularly
challenging to transduce. Existing electromechanical transduction
methods are ill-suited as they put constraints on the pillars’
material and do not enable a transduction of freestanding pillars.
Here, we present an electromechanical transduction method for single
nanomechanical pillar resonators based on surface acoustic waves (SAWs).
We demonstrate the transduction of freestanding nanomechanical platinum–carbon
pillars in the first-order bending and compression mode. Since the
principle of the transduction method is based on resonant scattering
of a SAW by a nanomechanical resonator, our transduction method is
independent of the pillar’s material and not limited to pillar-shaped
geometries. It represents a general method to transduce vertical mechanical
resonators with nanoscale lateral dimensions.