CPM Seminar

A tunable carbon nanotube resonator

Vera Sazonova

McEuen Group
Department of Physics
Cornell University

Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) hold promise for a number of scientific and technological applications. Carbon nanotubes (NT) are perhaps the ultimate material for realizing a NEMS device as they are the stifest material known, have low density, ultrasmall cross sections and can be defect-free. Equally important, a nanotube can act as a transistor and thus is able to sense its own motion. Here,we report the electrical actuation and detection of the guitar-stringoscillation modes of doubly-clamped NT oscillators. We observed resonance frequencies in the 5MHz to 400MHz range that can be widely tuned by a gate voltage. The observed resonances have quality factors in the range of 50 to 200 at room temperature. The quality factors increase to the range of 300 to 900 as the temperature is lowered to 100K. A discussion of possible dissipation mechanisms will be presented.