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Title: Thermal vibration characteristics of armchair boron-nitride nanotubes

Journal Article · · Journal of Applied Physics
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4937559· OSTI ID:22493065
 [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302 (India)
  2. Advanced Technology Development Center, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302 (India)
  3. Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302 (India)

A nanomechanical resonator based sensor works by detecting small changes in the natural frequency of the device in presence of external agents. In this study, we address the length and the temperature-dependent sensitivity of precompressed armchair Boron-Nitride nanotubes towards their use as sensors. The vibrational data, obtained using molecular dynamics simulations, are analyzed for frequency content through the fast Fourier transformation. As the temperature of the system rises, the vibrational spectrum becomes noisy, and the modal frequencies show a red-shift irrespective of the length of the nanotube, suggesting that the nanotube based sensors calibrated at a particular temperature may not function desirably at other temperatures. Temperature-induced noise becomes increasingly pronounced with the decrease in the length of the nanotube. For the shorter nanotube at higher temperatures, we observe multiple closely spaced peaks near the natural frequency, that create a masking effect and reduce the sensitivity of detection. However, longer nanotubes do not show these spurious frequencies, and are considerably more sensitive than the shorter ones.

OSTI ID:
22493065
Journal Information:
Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 118, Issue 23; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-8979
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English