Lithium niobate is the archetypical ferroelectric material and the substrate of choice for numerous applications including surface acoustic wave radio frequencies devices and integrated optics. It offers a unique combination of substantial piezoelectric and birefringent properties, yet its lack of optical activity and semiconducting transport hamper application in optoelectronics. Here we fabricate and characterize a hybrid MoS2/LiNbO3 acousto-electric device via a scalable route that uses millimetre-scale direct chemical vapour deposition of MoS2 followed by lithographic definition of a field-effect transistor structure on top. The prototypical device exhibits electrical characteristics competitive with MoS2 devices on silicon. Surface acoustic waves excited on the substrate can manipulate and probe the electrical transport in the monolayer device in a contact-free manner. We realize both a sound-driven battery and an acoustic photodetector. Our findings open directions to non-invasive investigation of electrical properties of monolayer films.

We probe and control the optical properties of emission centers forming in radial heterostructure GaAs-Al 0.3 Ga 0.7 As nanowires and show that these emitters, located in Al 0.3 Ga 0.7 As layers, can exhibit quantum-dot like characteristics. We employ a radio frequency surface acoustic wave to dynamically control their emission energy and occupancy state on a nanosecond timescale. In the spectral oscillations we identify unambiguous signatures arising from both the mechanical and electrical component of the surface acoustic wave. In addition, different emission lines of a single emission center exhibit pronounced anti-correlated intensity oscillations during the acoustic cycle. These arise from a dynamically triggered carrier extraction out of the emission center to a continuum in the radial heterostructure. Using finite element modeling and Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin theory we identify quantum tunneling as the underlying mechanism. These simulation results quantitatively reproduce the observed switching and show that in our systems these emission centers are spatially separated from the continuum by > 10.5 nm.

The concept of Fourier synthesis is heavily used in both consumer electronic products and fundamental research. In the latter, pulse shaping is key to dynamically initializing, probing and manipulating the state of classical or quantum systems. In NMR, for instance, shaped pulses have a long-standing tradition and the underlying fundamental concepts have subsequently been successfully extended to optical frequencies and even to the implementation of quantum gate operations. Transferring these paradigms to nanomechanical systems requires tailored nanomechanical waveforms. Here, we report on an additive Fourier synthesizer for nanomechanical waveforms based on monochromatic surface acoustic waves. As a proof of concept, we electrically synthesize four different elementary nanomechanical waveforms from a fundamental surface acoustic wave at f1 ≈ 150 MHz using a superposition of up to three discrete harmonics. We use these shaped pulses to interact with an individual sensor quantum dot and detect their deliberately and temporally modulated strain component via the optomechanical quantum dot response. Importantly, and in contrast to direct mechanical actuation by bulk piezoactuators, surface acoustic waves provide much higher frequencies (>20 GHz; ref. 10) to resonantly drive mechanical motion. Thus, our technique uniquely allows coherent mechanical control of localized vibronic modes of optomechanical crystals, even in the quantum limit when cooled to the vibrational ground state.