High-frequency stochastic switching of graphene resonators near room temperature

Abstract

Stochastic switching between the two bistable states of a strongly driven mechanical resonator enables detection of weak signals based on probability distributions, in a manner that mimics biological systems. However, conventional silicon resonators at the microscale require a large amount of fluctuation power to achieve a switching rate in the order of a few Hertz. Here, we employ graphene membrane resonators of atomic thickness to achieve a stochastic switching rate of 7.8 kHz, which is 200 times faster than current state-of-the-art. The (effective) temperature of the fluctuations is approximately 400 K, which is 3000 times lower than the state-of-the-art. This shows that these membranes are potentially useful to transduce weak signals in the audible frequency domain. Furthermore, we perform numerical simulations to understand the transition dynamics of the resonator and derive simple analytical expressions to investigate the relevant scaling parameters that allow high-frequency, low-temperature stochastic switching to be achieved in mechanical resonators.

References in corpus (9)

• Two Dimensional Atomic Crystals
• Electron beam nanosculpting of suspended graphene sheets
• Coherent Signal Amplification in Bistable Nanomechanical Oscillators by Stochastic Resonance
• Optically levitated nanoparticle as a model system for stochastic bistable dynamics
• Activation barrier scaling and crossover for noise-induced switching in a micromechanical parametric oscillator
• Paths of fluctuation induced switching
• Fluctuation-enhanced frequency mixing in a nonlinear micromechanical oscillator
• Amplitude calibration of 2D mechanical resonators by nonlinear optical transduction
• Noise-induced switching from a symmetry-protected shallow metastable state

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Dynamics of 2D Material Membranes
• Resonantly induced friction in driven nanomechanical systems
• Squeeze-film effect on atomically thin resonators in the high-pressure limit
• Noise-induced switching from a symmetry-protected shallow metastable state
• Resonant nonlinear response of a nanomechanical system with broken symmetry