Molecular dynamics modeling and simulations of graphene-nanoribbon-resonator-based nanobalance as yoctogram resolution detector

Molecular dynamics methods are used to model the vibrational behavior of a suspended graphene-resonator that absorbs a finite mass at constant temperature. The effective molecular dynamics simulations easily estimate the fundamental frequency shifts of the suspended graphene with attached mass. The resonance frequency of the graphene-resonator can be functionalized by both the attached mass and the applied force. The results obtained from the molecular dynamics simulations were in good agreement with those of previous related experimental and theoretical works. For this graphene-based scaled nanobalance, the possible frequency-shift ranges increased with increasing applied force and with decreasing attached mass, they then reached 75-80% of the fundamental resonance frequency of a bare graphene-resonator. The mass sensitivity of the graphene-resonator reached similar to 10(-24) g and a logarithmically linear relationship was found in the frequency-vs-mass curves for attached masses of 10(-21)-10(-19) g. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.