Nanomechanical strain concentration on a 2D nanobridge within a large suspended bilayer graphene for molecular mass detection

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how engineering nanoconstrictions in suspended bilayer graphene can concentrate strain up to 5%, significantly exceeding native strain levels, enabling advanced molecular mass detection and complex strain tensor control.

Contribution

The study introduces a geometric engineering approach to control and concentrate strain in bilayer graphene, surpassing previous methods and enabling complex strain configurations.

Findings

Strain concentration up to 5% in nanoconstrictions

Enhanced asymmetric strain between graphene layers

Potential for complex strain tensor engineering

Abstract

The recent emergence of strain gradient engineering directly affects the nanomechanics, optoelectronics and thermal transport fields in 2D materials. More specifically, large suspended graphene under very high stress represents the quintessence for nanomechanical mass detection through unique molecular reactions. Different techniques have been used to induce strain in 2D materials, for instance by applying tip indentation, pressure or substrate bending on a graphene membrane. Nevertheless, an efficient way to control the strain of a structure is to engineer the system geometry as shown in everyday life in architecture and acoustics. Similarly, we studied the concentration of strain in artificial nanoconstrictions (~100 nm) in a suspended epitaxial bilayer graphene membrane with different geometries and lengths ranging from 10 to 40 micrometer. We carefully isolated the strain signature from micro-Raman measurements and extracted information on a scale below the laser spot size by analyzing the broadened shape of our Raman peaks, up to 100 cm-1. We potentially measured a strong strain concentration in a nanoconstriction up to 5percent, which is 20 times larger than the native epitaxial graphene strain. Moreover, with a bilayer graphene, our configuration naturally enhanced the native asymmetric strain between the upper and lower graphene layers. In contrast to previous results, we can achieve any kind of complex strain tensor in graphene thanks to our structural approach. This method completes the previous strain-induced techniques and opens up new perspectives for bilayer graphene and 2D heterostructures based devices.