Ring my string: Building silicon nano-strings

The tighter the string, the faster it vibrates. Increased tension reduces the loss of the string's vibrational modes.

This effect has been used to develop mechanical devices for quantum technologies, where engineered, tensioned nanostrings with a thickness of just a few tens of atomic layers oscillate more than ten billion times after being plucked just once. It would take about a year for the same sound to be heard on a guitar.

The researchers at EPFL have made a simple observation about crystal oscillators, which are ubiquitously used in electronic devices and are known to possess extremely small mechanical energy loss at low temperature. The researchers found that if a material is stretched with high tension and retains its atomic order, it would be a good candidate for making strings. The study is published in a journal.

The paper's authors say strained Silicon films are used to improve the performance of transistors.

Extreme aspect ratios are a major challenge. The devices are 12 nanometers-thick and up to 6 millimeters-long. The tip of such a string would surpass Medium Earth Orbit if it were built standing upright.

The structures become fragile and susceptible to tiny perturbations during the last steps of their microfabrication, according to the paper's first author.

For quantum-mechanical experiments, strained Silicon nanostrings provide excellent isolation from environmental noise and allow the creation of high-purity quantum states.

A long-standing quest in fundamental physics is to study and extend the size and mass scales of objects that exhibit quantum-mechanical behavior before the ever-increasing random kicks and fluctuations from the hot, noisy environment.

For example, the minuscule radiation pressure of light beams, to weak interactions with dark matter particles and to magnetic fields produced by subatomic particles, could be used as precision force-sensors.

More information: Alberto Beccari, Strained crystalline nanomechanical resonators with quality factors above 10 billion, Nature Physics (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-021-01498-4. www.nature.com/articles/s41567-021-01498-4 Journal information: Nature Physics Citation: Ring my string: Building silicon nano-strings (2022, February 28) retrieved 28 February 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-02-silicon-nano-strings.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.