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Nanotube mechanical resonators with quality factors of up to 5 million

Nature Nanotechnology volume 9, pages 1007–1011 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Carbon nanotube mechanical resonators have attracted considerable interest because of their small mass, the high quality of their surfaces, and the pristine electronic states they host1,2,3,4. However, their small dimensions result in fragile vibrational states that are difficult to measure. Here, we observe quality factors Q as high as 5 × 106 in ultra-clean nanotube resonators at a cryostat temperature of 30 mK, where we define Q as the ratio of the resonant frequency over the linewidth. Measuring such high quality factors requires the use of an ultra-low-noise method to rapidly detect minuscule vibrations, as well as careful reduction of the noise of the electrostatic environment. We observe that the measured quality factors fluctuate because of fluctuations of the resonant frequency. We measure record-high quality factors, which are comparable to the highest Q values reported in mechanical resonators of much larger size5,6, a remarkable result considering that reducing the size of resonators is usually concomitant with decreasing quality factors. The combination of ultra-low mass and very large Q offers new opportunities for ultra-sensitive detection schemes and quantum optomechanical experiments.

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Figure 1: Carbon nanotube mechanical resonator.
Figure 2: Fluctuations of the Q-factor and resonant frequency.
Figure 3: Characterization of the Q-factor and of the fluctuations in f0.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank H. Flyvbjerg and S. Nørrelykke for discussions. The authors acknowledge support from the European Union through the ERC-carbonNEMS project (279278), a Marie Curie grant (271938) and the Graphene Flagship, MINECO and FEDER (MAT2012-31338), the Catalan government (AGAUR, SGR), and the US Army Research Office.

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Author notes

  1. A. Eichler

    Present address: Present address: Department of Physics, ETH Zurich, Schafmattstrasse 16, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICFO–Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, Mediterranean Technology Park, Castelldefels (Barcelona), 08860, Spain

    J. Moser, A. Eichler, J. Güttinger & A. Bachtold

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 48824, Michigan, USA

    M. I. Dykman

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  1. J. Moser
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  5. A. Bachtold
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Contributions

J.M. developed the experimental set-up, carried out the measurements and analysed the data. A.E. fabricated the devices. J.G. provided support for the experimental set-up. M.I.D. and A.B. provided support for the analysis. M.I.D. wrote Supplementary Section X. J.M., M.I.D. and A.B. wrote the manuscript, with critical comments from all authors. A.B. and J.M. conceived the experiment. A.B. supervised the work.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. Bachtold.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Moser, J., Eichler, A., Güttinger, J. et al. Nanotube mechanical resonators with quality factors of up to 5 million. Nature Nanotech 9, 1007–1011 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.234

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