Velocity-Dependent Frequency of Carbon-Nanotube Oscillators with Intertube Gaps

Abstract

We investigated the resonance frequencies of the carbon-nanotube (CNT)-oscillator with intertube gap as functions of the initial velocity of the coretube and the total length of the outertuber including intertube spacing via classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The maximum resonance frequencies of the CNT-oscillators decreased with increasing initial velocity of the coretube. Two operation modes were found in the results of the MD simulations. One was similar to that of the simple CNT oscillators and the other was out of the simple CNT oscillators because of the gap spacing between both outertubes. For the structure with large intertube gaps, the coretube, which was initially oscillated between both outertubes, finally settled into an outertube after its kineticenergy dissipations, and this gave a potential that the CNT-oscillators with intertube gaps can be applied to a relay-switching device and a shuttle memory.