The Importance of Edge Effects on the Intrinsic Loss Mechanisms of Graphene Nanoresonators

Abstract

We utilize classical molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the intrinsic loss mechanisms of monolayer graphene nanoresonators undergoing flexural oscillations. We find that spurious edge modes of vibration, which arise not due to externally applied stresses but intrinsically due to the different vibrational properties of edge atoms, are the dominant intrinsic loss mechanism that reduces the Q-factors. We additionally find that while hydrogen passivation of the free edges is ineffective in reducing the spurious edge modes, fixing the free edges is critical to removing the spurious edge-induced vibrational states. Our atomistic simulations also show that the Q-factor degrades inversely proportional to temperature; furthermore, we also demonstrate that the intrinsic losses can be reduced significantly across a range of operating temperatures through the application of tensile mechanical strain.

15 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Nano Letters

References in corpus (2)

• Two Dimensional Atomic Crystals
• Structure, Stability, Edge States and Aromaticity of Graphene Ribbons

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• Edge states induce boundary temperature jump in molecular dynamics simulation of heat conduction
• Enhancing the Mass Sensitivity of Graphene Nanoresonators Via Nonlinear Oscillations: The Effective Strain Mechanism
• A fundamental numerical and theoretical study for the vibrational properties of nanowires
• Intrinsic Energy Dissipation in CVD-Grown Graphene Nanoresonators