Condensed Matter Seminars

I will describe our fabrication and characterization of torsional oscillators which use multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) as the torsion springs. We have, through direct force measurements with a scanning probe microscope, measured the torsional properties of individual MWNTs. We discovered a surprising increase in the torsional stiffness of the MWNTs with repeated deflections. We have also actuated the devices electrostatically, demonstrating a self-contained electromechanical device. We use optical interferometry to measure the on-resonance behavior of the electrostatically-driven devices.