Invited Paper MN+2D+NS-ThA3
Manipulating Nonlinearities in 2D NEMS

Thursday, November 10, 2016, 3:00 pm, Room 102B

Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are exquisitely sensitive to various stimuli and make fantastic sensors. NEMS devices fabricated using top down fabrication techniques have already demonstrated the ability to measure mass of individual protein macromolecules and their potential use in mass spectrometry applications. NEMS devices fabricated using atomically thin membranes have the potential to bring the resolution of these devices down to single Dalton. However, nonlinearities in these 2D NEMS are quite prominent and can dramatically reduce the dynamic range of these sensors. It is thus imperative to employ strategies to minimize the effect of nonlinearities as well as to exploit them to improve the performance of these devices.

In this talk, I’ll present two distinct ways in which we manipulate the nonlinearities in these atomically thin NEMS devices and improve their performance for sensing and oscillator applications. In the first method we manipulate bias voltages and strain in these devices to partially cancel out the nonlinearities present in the system. In the second method, we exploit the strong coupling between various vibrational modes to initiate internal resonance. The frequency stability, and thus the mass resolution, can be improved by orders of magnitude by operating these devices at internal resonances.