Controlled driven oscillations of double-walled carbon nanotubes

¹  Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Monash University - Clayton, VIC3800, Australia
²  Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University - Beijing, China

Corresponding author: adrian.neild@eng.monash.edu.au

Received: 23 April 2009
Accepted: 18 June 2009

Abstract

The quest to develop workable electromechanical mechanisms in the nanoscale has often been predicated on meeting the conditions of super-low damping. We show here that the use of periodic forces to drive sliding core/shell double-walled carbon nanotube architectures produces oscillating-displacement response characteristics that are far more complex than cantilever-based designs, which suggest that meeting the conditions of controllability is much more pertinent for such architectures. Knowledge of these characteristics is necessary to successfully create sliding core/shell oscillator architectures that are capable of operating at gigahertz frequencies. In this work, we investigated the cases of the core and shell having equal and unequal lengths; and show the merits of using the latter.