Detecting Ultrasound Vibrations by Graphene Resonators

Abstract

Ultrasound detection is one of the most important nondestructive subsurface characterization tools of materials, whose goal is to laterally resolve the subsurface structure with nanometer or even atomic resolution. In recent years, graphene resonators attracted attention as loudspeaker and ultrasound radio, showing its potential to realize communication systems with air-carried ultrasound. Here we show a graphene resonator that detects ultrasound vibrations propagating through the substrate on which it was fabricated. We achieve ultimately a resolution of $\approx 7$~pm/$\sqrt{\mathrm{H}}\mathrm{z}$ in ultrasound amplitude at frequencies up to 100~MHz. Thanks to an extremely high nonlinearity in the mechanical restoring force, the resonance frequency itself can also be used for ultrasound detection. We observe a shift of 120~kHz at a resonance frequency of 65~MHz for an induced vibration amplitude of 100~pm with a resolution of 25~pm. Remarkably, the nonlinearity also explains the generally observed asymmetry in the resonance frequency tuning of the resonator when pulled upon with an electrostatic gate. This work puts forward a sensor design that fits onto an atomic force microscope cantilever and therefore promises direct ultrasound detection at the nanoscale for nondestructive subsurface characterization.

arXiv comment18 pages, 12 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (17)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• Ultrahigh electron mobility in suspended graphene
• A tunable carbon nanotube electromechanical oscillator
• A Mechanical Mass Sensor with Yoctogram Resolution
• Performance of Monolayer Graphene Nanomechanical Resonators with Electrical Readout
• Nonlinear damping in mechanical resonators based on graphene and carbon nanotubes
• Ultrasensitive force detection with a nanotube mechanical resonator
• Strong coupling between single-electron tunneling and nano-mechanical motion
• Ballistic transport exceeding 28 μm in CVD grown graphene
• Graphene mechanical oscillators with tunable frequency
• Stamp transferred suspended graphene mechanical resonators for radio-frequency electrical readout
• Electrostatic Graphene Loudspeaker
• The Importance of Edge Effects on the Intrinsic Loss Mechanisms of Graphene Nanoresonators
• Symmetry breaking in a mechanical resonator made from a carbon nanotube
• Why edge effects are important on the intrinsic loss mechanisms of graphene nanoresonators?
• Graphene on silicon nitride for optoelectromechanical micromembrane resonators
• Friction as Contrast Mechanism in Heterodyne Force Microscopy

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Nanoelectromechanical Sensors based on Suspended 2D Materials
• Dynamics of 2D Material Membranes
• Sliding nanomechanical resonators
• Four ribbons of double-layer graphene suspending masses for NEMS applications
• Nanomechanical spectroscopy of 2D materials
• Squeeze-film effect on atomically thin resonators in the high-pressure limit
• The graphene squeeze-film microphone
• Electrically-tunable graphene nanomechanical resonators
• Graphene resonator as an ultrasound detector for generalized Love waves in a polymer film with two level states
• Towards tunable graphene phononic crystals
• Parallel measurements of vibrational modes in a few-layer graphene nanomechanical resonator using software-defined radio dongles
• Eigenmodes and resonance vibrations of 2D nanomembranes -- Graphene and hexagonal boron-nitride
• Nanomechanical vibrational response from electrical mixing measurements
• Tunable coupling of two mechanical resonators by a graphene membrane
• Tunable parametric amplification of a graphene nanomechanical resonator in the nonlinear regime