Shuttling of electrons and Cooper pairs

Abstract

Properties of nanocomposite materials are affected by a coupling betweenmechanical deformations of the materials and electronic charge transport. In oneof the simplest systems of this kind, a single electron transistor (SET) withdeformable tunnel barriers (nanoelectromechanical SET), mechanically assistedcharge transfer becomes possible. This can be viewed as ‘shuttling of singleelectrons’ between metallic leads by a movable small-sized cluster. In this articlewe review some recent theoretical and experimental achievements concerningshuttle transport, in normal as well as superconducting systems.