High-frequency nanotube mechanical resonators

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple fabrication method for high-frequency nanotube resonators, achieving frequencies up to 11 GHz, enabling advanced sensing and quantum experiments.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a reproducible fabrication technique for nanotube resonators with frequencies up to 11 GHz and measure their thermal expansion coefficient.

Findings

Resonance frequencies up to 11 GHz achieved

Negative thermal expansion coefficient of about -0.7E-5 1/K measured

Potential applications in mass sensing and quantum experiments

Abstract

We report on a simple method to fabricate high-frequency nanotube mechanical resonators reproducibly. We measure resonance frequencies as high as 4.2 GHz for the fundamental eigenmode and 11 GHz for higher order eigenmodes. The high-frequency resonances are achieved using short suspended nanotubes and by introducing tensile stress in the nanotube. These devices allow us to determine the coefficient of the thermal expansion of an individual nanotube, which is negative and is about -0.7E-5 1/K at room temperature. High-frequency resonators made of nanotubes hold promise for mass sensing and experiments in the quantum limit.