Graphene mechanical oscillators with tunable frequency

Oscillators, which produce continuous periodic signals from direct current power, are central to modern communications systems, with versatile applications such as timing references and frequency modulators. However, conventional oscillators typically consist of macroscopic mechanical resonators suc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2016-12
Main Authors: Chen, Changyao, Sunwoo, Lee, Deshpande, Vikram V, Lee, Gwan-Hyoung, Lekas, Michael, Shepard, Kenneth, Hone, James
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bandwidths
Circuits
Control stability
Direct current
Frequency stability
Graphene
Mechanical oscillators
Modulation
Modulators
Oscillators
Quartz crystals
Radio signals
Resonators
Signal generation
Signal transmission
Voltage controlled oscillators
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Summary:Oscillators, which produce continuous periodic signals from direct current power, are central to modern communications systems, with versatile applications such as timing references and frequency modulators. However, conventional oscillators typically consist of macroscopic mechanical resonators such as quartz crystals, which require excessive off-chip space. Here we report oscillators built on micron-size, atomically-thin graphene nanomechanical resonators, whose frequencies can be electrostatically tuned by as much as 14\%. The self-sustaining mechanical motion of the oscillators is generated and transduced at room temperature by simple electrical circuitry. The prototype graphene voltage controlled oscillators exhibit frequency stability and modulation bandwidth sufficient for modulation of radio-frequency carrier signals. As a demonstration, we employ a graphene oscillator as the active element for frequency modulated signal generation, and achieve efficient audio signal transmission.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1612.04019