Mass Detection With Nonlinear Nanomechanical Resonators Available to Purchase

Nanomechanical resonators having small mass, high resonance frequency and low damping rate are widely employed as mass detectors. We study the performance of such a detector when the resonator is driven into a region of nonlinear oscillations [1]. We predict theoretically that the mass sensitivity of the device in this region may exceed the upper bound imposed by thermo-mechanical noise upon the sensitivity when operating in the linear region. On the other hand, we find that the high mass sensitivity is accompanied by a slow response of the system to a change in the mass. For experimental demonstration we employ homodyne detection (see Fig. 1) for readout of the output signal of an optical displacement detector, which monitors the motion of a doubly clamped nanomechanical resonator made of Pd-Au [2, 3]. The nanomechanical resonator is driven into the region of nonlinear oscillations (see Fig. 2) and the region of bistability is identified (see Fig. 3). As expected theoretically [1] we find that when operating close to the edge of the bistability region the device exhibits strong intermodulation amplification [2] (see Fig. 3). Moreover, strong noise squeezing in the output signal of the homodyne detector is observed in this region [3] (see Fig. 4). An alternative mass detection scheme, in which the resonator is driven into a stochastic resonance, will also be discussed [4].