Abstract
At micro- and nanoscales, materials with high Young’s moduli and low densities are of great interest for high-frequency micromechanical resonator devices1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Incorporating carbon nanotubes (CNTs), with their unmatched properties, has added functionality to many man-made composites9,10,11. We report on the fabrication of ≤100-nm-thick laminates by sputter-deposition of aluminium onto a two-dimensional single-walled CNT network12,13. These nanolaminates—composed of Al, its native oxide Al2O3 and CNTs—are fashioned, in a scalable manner, into suspended doubly clamped micromechanical beams. Dynamic flexural measurements show marked increases in resonant frequencies for nanolaminates with Al–CNT laminae. Such increases, further supported by quasi-static flexural measurements, are partly attributable to enhancements in elastic properties arising from the addition of CNTs. As a consequence, these nanolaminate micromechanical resonators show significant suppression of mechanical nonlinearity and enhanced strength, both of which are advantageous for practical applications and analogous to biological nanocomposites, similarly composed of high-aspect-ratio, mechanically superior mineral platelets in a soft protein matrix14.
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Acknowledgements
This work is mainly supported by the Seoul R&BD program. S.H. and Y.D.P. are partly supported by MOCIE. K.C. and Y.D.P. are partly supported by Samsung Electronics Corporation and KOSEF though CSCMR. J.H.B. and Y.D.K. would like to thank the Seoul Science Fellowship program; S.H. would like to acknowledge support from the MOST NRL program; M.K. would like to acknowledge KOSEF (ROA-2007-000-10014-0) and Y.D.P. would like to acknowledge the KRF (MOEHRD, Basic Research Promotion Fund) (KRF-2006-311-C00297). We would like to thank S. W. Cho for help with the focused ion beam experiments and W. S. Choi and T. W. Noh for the optical reflectivity measurements.
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J.H.B. conducted the quasi-static flexural measurements with assistance from B.Y.L. and S.H. Y.D.K. conducted the dynamic flexural measurements with assistance from J.H.B. and S.S.H. S.S.H. developed the micromechanical resonator fabrication method with assistance from J.H.B. and Y.D.K. (B.Y.L. and S.H. assembled the CNT network; S.R.L. and K.C. deposited Al). J.H.J. and M.K. conducted the TEM characterizations. Y.D.P. designed the experiment with assistance from J.H.B., Y.D.K. and S.S.H. J.H.B., Y.D.K. and Y.D.P. analysed the data with assistance from S.S.H. Y.D.P. prepared the manuscript with assistance from J.H.B., Y.D.K., S.S.H., M.K., K.C. and S.H.
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Bak, J., Kim, Y., Hong, S. et al. High-frequency micromechanical resonators from aluminium–carbon nanotube nanolaminates. Nature Mater 7, 459–463 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2181
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2181
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