Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

High-frequency micromechanical resonators from aluminium–carbon nanotube nanolaminates

Nature Materials volume 7, pages 459–463 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

At micro- and nanoscales, materials with high Young’s moduli and low densities are of great interest for high-frequency micromechanical resonator devices1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Incorporating carbon nanotubes (CNTs), with their unmatched properties, has added functionality to many man-made composites9,10,11. We report on the fabrication of ≤100-nm-thick laminates by sputter-deposition of aluminium onto a two-dimensional single-walled CNT network12,13. These nanolaminates—composed of Al, its native oxide Al2O3 and CNTs—are fashioned, in a scalable manner, into suspended doubly clamped micromechanical beams. Dynamic flexural measurements show marked increases in resonant frequencies for nanolaminates with Al–CNT laminae. Such increases, further supported by quasi-static flexural measurements, are partly attributable to enhancements in elastic properties arising from the addition of CNTs. As a consequence, these nanolaminate micromechanical resonators show significant suppression of mechanical nonlinearity and enhanced strength, both of which are advantageous for practical applications and analogous to biological nanocomposites, similarly composed of high-aspect-ratio, mechanically superior mineral platelets in a soft protein matrix14.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Fabrication of AAC laminate micromechanical resonator.
Figure 2: Dynamic flexural measurements of laminate micromechanical resonators.
Figure 3: Quasi-static flexural measurements.
Figure 4: Large-amplitude dynamic-flexural-response measurements.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Henry Huang, X. M., Zorman, C. A., Mehregany, M. & Roukes, M. L. Nanoelectromechanical systems: Nanodevice motion at microwave frequencies. Nature 421, 496–496 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Hutchinson, A. B. et al. Dissipation in nanocrystalline-diamond nanomechanical resonators. Appl. Phys. Lett. 84, 972–974 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Sazonova, V. et al. A tunable carbon nanotube electromechanical oscillator. Nature 431, 284–287 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Ekinci, K. L. & Roukes, M. L. Nanoelectromechanical systems. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 76, 061101 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Aldridge, J. S. & Cleland, A. N. Noise-enabled precision measurements of a Duffing nanomechanical resonator. Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 156403 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Bunch, J. S. et al. Electromechanical resonators from graphene sheets. Science 315, 490–493 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Imboden, M., Mohanty, P., Gaidarzhy, A., Rankin, J. & Sheldon, B. W. Scaling of dissipation in megahertz-range micromechanical diamond oscillators. Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 173502 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Verbridge, S. S., Shapiro, D. F., Craighead, H. G. & Parpia, J. M. Macroscopic tuning of nanomechanics: Substrate bending for reversible control of frequency and quality factor of nanostring resonators. Nano Lett. 7, 1728–1735 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Mamedov, A. A. et al. Molecular design of strong single-wall carbon nanotube/polyelectrolyte multilayer composites. Nature Mater. 1, 190–194 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Zhan, G.-D., Kuntz, J. D., Wan, J. & Mukherjee, A. K. Single-wall carbon nanotubes as attractive toughening agents in alumina-based nanocomposites. Nature Mater. 2, 38–42 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Veedu, V. P. et al. Multifunctional composites using reinforced laminae with carbon-nanotube forests. Nature Mater. 5, 457–462 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Rao, S. G., Huang, L., Setyawan, W. & Hong, S. Nanotube electronics: Large-scale assembly of carbon nanotubes. Nature 425, 36–37 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Lee, M. et al. Linker-free directed assembly of high-performance integrated devices based on nanotubes and nanowires. Nature Nanotechnol. 1, 66–71 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Gao, H., Ji, B., Jager, I. L., Arzt, E. & Fratzl, P. Materials become insensitive to flaws at nanoscale: Lessons from nature. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 100, 5597–5600 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Fritz, J. et al. Translating biomolecular recognition into nanomechanics. Science 288, 316–318 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Dorignac, J., Kalinowski, A., Erramilli, S. & Mohanty, P. Dynamical response of nanomechanical oscillators in immiscible viscous fluid for in vitro biomolecular recognition. Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 186105 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Badzey, R. L. & Mohanty, P. Coherent signal amplification in bistable nanomechanical oscillators by stochastic resonance. Nature 437, 995–998 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Shim, S.-B., Imboden, M. & Mohanty, P. Synchronized oscillation in coupled nanomechanical oscillators. Science 316, 95–99 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Knobel, R. G. & Cleland, A. N. Nanometre-scale displacement sensing using a single electron transistor. Nature 424, 291–293 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Schwab, K. C. & Roukes, M. L. Putting mechanics into quantum mechanics. Phys. Today 58, 36–42 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Bishop, D., Heuer, A. & Williams, D. Microelectromechanical systems: Technology and applications. Mater. Res. Soc. Bull. 4, 282 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Ruoff, R. S. Time, temperature, and load: The flaws of carbon nanotubes. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103, 6779–6780 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Hemker, K. J. & Sharpe, W. N. Microscale characterization of mechanical properties. Annu. Rev. Mater. Res. 37, 93–126 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Chawla, K. K. in Composite Materials (eds Ilschner, B. & Grant, N. J.) (Springer, Berlin, 1987).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  25. Maranganti, R. & Sharma, P. Length scales at which classical elasticity breaks down for various materials. Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 195504 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Shim, S. B. et al. Micromechanical resonators fabricated from lattice-matched and etch-selective GaAs/InGaP/GaAs heterostructures. Appl. Phys. Lett. 91, 133505 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Samuel, B. A. & Haque, M. A. Room temperature relaxation of freestanding nanocrystalline gold films. J. Micromech. Microeng. 16, 929–934 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  28. Lachut, M. J. & Sader, J. E. Effect of surface stress on the stiffness of cantilever plates. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 206102 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Xiong, Q., Duarte, N., Tadigadapa, S. & Eklund, P. C. Force–deflection spectroscopy: A new method to determine the Young’s modulus of nanofilaments. Nano Lett. 6, 1904 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Kaajakari, V., Mattila, T., Oja, A. & Seppa, H. Nonlinear limits for single-crystal silicon microresonators. J. Microelectromech. S 13, 715 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work is mainly supported by the Seoul R&BD program. S.H. and Y.D.P. are partly supported by MOCIE. K.C. and Y.D.P. are partly supported by Samsung Electronics Corporation and KOSEF though CSCMR. J.H.B. and Y.D.K. would like to thank the Seoul Science Fellowship program; S.H. would like to acknowledge support from the MOST NRL program; M.K. would like to acknowledge KOSEF (ROA-2007-000-10014-0) and Y.D.P. would like to acknowledge the KRF (MOEHRD, Basic Research Promotion Fund) (KRF-2006-311-C00297). We would like to thank S. W. Cho for help with the focused ion beam experiments and W. S. Choi and T. W. Noh for the optical reflectivity measurements.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Jung Hoon Bak and Young Duck Kim: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-747, Korea

    Jung Hoon Bak, Young Duck Kim, Seung Sae Hong, Byung Yang Lee, Seung Ran Lee, Kookrin Char, Seunghun Hong & Yun Daniel Park

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-744, Korea

    Jae Hyuck Jang & Miyoung Kim

Authors
  1. Jung Hoon Bak
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Young Duck Kim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Seung Sae Hong
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Byung Yang Lee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Seung Ran Lee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Jae Hyuck Jang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Miyoung Kim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Kookrin Char
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Seunghun Hong
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Yun Daniel Park
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

J.H.B. conducted the quasi-static flexural measurements with assistance from B.Y.L. and S.H. Y.D.K. conducted the dynamic flexural measurements with assistance from J.H.B. and S.S.H. S.S.H. developed the micromechanical resonator fabrication method with assistance from J.H.B. and Y.D.K. (B.Y.L. and S.H. assembled the CNT network; S.R.L. and K.C. deposited Al). J.H.J. and M.K. conducted the TEM characterizations. Y.D.P. designed the experiment with assistance from J.H.B., Y.D.K. and S.S.H. J.H.B., Y.D.K. and Y.D.P. analysed the data with assistance from S.S.H. Y.D.P. prepared the manuscript with assistance from J.H.B., Y.D.K., S.S.H., M.K., K.C. and S.H.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yun Daniel Park.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figures S1–S15 and Supplementary Tables S1–S2 (PDF 1428 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bak, J., Kim, Y., Hong, S. et al. High-frequency micromechanical resonators from aluminium–carbon nanotube nanolaminates. Nature Mater 7, 459–463 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2181

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2181

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing