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Performance of monolayer graphene nanomechanical resonators with electrical readout

Abstract

The enormous stiffness and low density of graphene make it an ideal material for nanoelectromechanical applications. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication and electrical readout of monolayer graphene resonators, and test their response to changes in mass and temperature. The devices show resonances in the megahertz range, and the strong dependence of resonant frequency on applied gate voltage can be fitted to a membrane model to yield the mass density and built-in strain of the graphene. Following the removal and addition of mass, changes in both density and strain are observed, indicating that adsorbates impart tension to the graphene. On cooling, the frequency increases, and the shift rate can be used to measure the unusual negative thermal expansion coefficient of graphene. The quality factor increases with decreasing temperature, reaching 1 × 104 at 5 K. By establishing many of the basic attributes of monolayer graphene resonators, the groundwork for applications of these devices, including high-sensitivity mass detectors, is put in place.

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Figure 1: Device and experimental setup.
Figure 2: NEMS properties of graphene resonators.
Figure 3: Modelling of device behaviour.
Figure 4: Removal of mass by ohmic heating.
Figure 5: Effects of mass loading.
Figure 6: Temperature dependence.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Huang for useful discussions, H. Yan for Raman spectroscopy and V. Lee for evaporator setup. This work is supported by the DARPA Center on Nanoscale Science and Technology for Integrated Micro/Nano-Electromechanical Transducers (iMINT, grant no. HR0011-06-1-0048, D.L. Polla, Program Manager), the National Science Foundation (grant no. CHE-0117752), the W. M. Keck Foundation and Microsoft Project Q.

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Contributions

C.C., S.R. and J.H. designed the experiment. C.C. and W.K. carried out fabrication, S.R. and C.C. performed the experiments and analysed data, and K.B. assisted with the fabrication, measurement and data analysis. I.K. provided assistance with mass sensing. C.C., S.R. and J.H. co-wrote the paper. P.K., H.L.S. and T.F.H. provided materials and equipment. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to James Hone.

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Chen, C., Rosenblatt, S., Bolotin, K. et al. Performance of monolayer graphene nanomechanical resonators with electrical readout. Nature Nanotech 4, 861–867 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2009.267

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