Nonlinearity and temperature dependence of CVD graphene nanoelectromechanical resonator

As a two-dimensional material, graphene has outstanding properties, with high electron mobility and mechanical resistance. Therefore, it has good prospects to be used in nanoelectromechanical resonators for sensitive mass detection. Previously, a graphene resonator with graphene/metal contact able to zeptogram level sensing and a with quality factor of 42 at RT was presented. However, over-etching under the metal contacts degrades the quality factor, and resonators with metal/graphene/metal contacts were fabricated to overcome this issue. A quality factor of 350 at RT was obtained for a device with width = 0.8 mu m and length = 1 mu m. Tunning of the resonance frequency from 9.6 to 13.5 MHz with dc gate bias is demonstrated. Temperature reduction from 300 K to 30 K increased the resonance frequency by about 4-6 MHz. The temperature influence on nonlinearity is also discussed, with a resonator demonstrating softening and hardening nonlinearities at cryogenic temperatures.