Strain engineering of graphene nano-resonator

Abstract

Abstract Nano-resonators are increasingly used to study fundamental phenomena in dynamical systems. Strain tuning of resonance frequency provides an additional control knob in experiments that use these devices. In this work, we present a simple technique to tune the strain in these nano-resonators by controllably deforming a small section of the silicon substrate. We fabricate the graphene nano-resonators on a thinned circular region on the Si/SiO2 substrate. This circular diaphragm can be easily deformed by creating a pressure difference across it. We achieve this using a simple printed circuit board and KF-flange assembly. With this setup, we can produce a strain change of 12 × 10−5 on the device, with 1 bar pressure difference. This strain is enough to observe a corresponding frequency shift of 9 MHz. The proposed method to produce strain in the nano-resonators is free from any fabrication constraints and can be utilized for a wide variety of nano-resonators.