Motion transduction with thermo-mechanically squeezed graphene resonator modes

Abstract

There is a recent surge of interest in amplification and detection of tiny motion in the growing field of opto and electro mechanics. Here, we demonstrate widely tunable, broad bandwidth and high gain all-mechanical motion amplifiers based on graphene/Silicon Nitride (SiNx) hybrids. In these devices, a tiny motion of a large-area SiNx membrane is transduced to a much larger motion in a graphene drum resonator coupled to SiNx. Furthermore, the thermal noise of graphene is reduced (squeezed) through parametric tension modulation. The parameters of the amplifier are measured by photothermally actuating SiNx and interferometrically detecting graphene displacement. We obtain displacement power gain of 38 dB and demonstrate 4.7 dB of squeezing resulting in a detection sensitivity of 3.8 fm per square root Hz, close to the thermal noise limit of SiNx.