ENIGMA SIGNED

Project "ENIGMA" data sheet

The following table provides information about the project.

 Partnership

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 Project objective

Micro and nanomechanical systems are being adopted in billions of products, that address a wide range of sensor and actuator applications in modern technology. The advent of graphene, and the ability to fabricate single atom thick membranes, promises further device downscaling, enabling ultimate sensing capabilities that until recently seemed utopical. But, these atomically thin membranes are in essence nonlinear and exhibit nonlinear dynamic behavior at forces of only a few pN, which needs to be understood to harness their full potential. Although the field of nonlinear dynamics dates back several centuries, its implications at the atomic scale have remained relatively unexplored. Thermal fluctuations due to Brownian motion and nanoscale forces become dominant at this scale, and when combined with graphene’s exotic elasticity, give rise to phenomena that are not observed before, and cannot be explained by classical approaches. Our poor understanding of these complex features at the same time, have made characterization of graphene very challenging. An example is its bending modulus that is evaluated orders of magnitude higher than theoretical predications, by the available experimental methods. In this project, I aim at providing full understanding of nonlinearities of these one atom thick membranes, not only to unveil the enigmatic behavior of graphene but also to improve current nanomaterial characterization methods. The distinguishing feature of my methodology is that on the one side, it will be based on atomistic simulations combined with modal order reduction techniques, to predict the complexities at the single atom level; on the other side, experimental nonlinear dynamic data will be analyzed for evaluating nonlinear effects and extracting material properties using nonlinear resonances in the MHz range. My methodology will have the potential to serve as the next generation of characterization techniques for nanomaterial science and nanomechanics communities.

 Publications