Nonlinear Damping in Graphene Resonators

Alexander Croy, Daniel Midtvedt, Andreas Isacsson, Jari M. Kinaret

Published 2012-04-04, updated 2012-12-14Version 2

Based on a continuum mechanical model for single-layer graphene we propose and analyze a microscopic mechanism for dissipation in nanoelectromechanical graphene resonators. We find that coupling between flexural modes and in-plane phonons leads to linear and nonlinear damping of out-of-plane vibrations. By tuning external parameters such as bias and ac voltages, one can cross over from a linear to a nonlinear-damping dominated regime. We discuss the behavior of the effective quality factor in this context.