Probing the Mechanics of Crumpled Graphene Membranes under Tensile Loading: An Experimental Study

Graphene is considered a promising material due to its unique electrical characteristics and excellent mechanical properties. These extraordinary properties make graphene a suitable material for applications like mechanical reinforcements, protective coatings, supercapacitors, sensors, etc. However, when trying to extract these properties...

Probing nanomotion and comparing antibiotic efficacy of a single E. coli bacterium on silicon and graphene

With the incline of multidrug resistant bacteria due to the widespread use of antibiotics, there has been an ongoing search for a faster and more effective method to test the effect of antibiotics on bacteria. With current techniques for investigation of bacterial resistance requiring a minimum of 24 hours to complete, a new technique is...

Investigation of the nonlinear dynamics of a diamagnetically levitating plate

Over the past decades the diamagnetic effect has been used for a variety of applications. This ranges from levitating a living frog to stabilizing a force sensor, designing an acceleration sensor and determin­ing the power of a laser. Diamagnetic levitation is the only method in which a passive stable levitation of an object can be achieved....

Mode coupling in nanomechanical string resonators: Towards Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou mechanics

In the early years of numerical simulation methods, Fermi, Pasta, Ulam and Tsingou (FPUT) discovered that an undamped, weakly nonlinear equation describing the motion of a chain of masses and springs could show complex dynamics. Integration of these equations froma n initial displacement in the formof the fundamental mode resulted in significant...

Influence of Mode-Coupling on Q-factor in Nanomechanical Resonators

Nanomechanical resonators with low dissipation rates are ideal tools in fundamental science applications. They have been used in the field of cavity optomechanics for example in ground-state cooling, and in sensing applications, such as atomic resolution mass sensors. Their great sensitivity is due to their high Q-factor, which is a metric that...

Three-step method to design the preload of geometries to create spatial large range of motion zero-stiffness compliant mechanisms

Modelling viscoelasticity using Multifrequency AFM

Viscoelasticity is a material property that is relevant in a variety of nanoscale materials and interfaces in medicine and industry. Therefore, a method of mechanical quantification has become exceedingly desired. In this thesis the Atomic force microscope (AFM) is applied to accurately characterize the mechanical behavior of viscoelastic...

Hamaker constant and tip radius determination in dynamic atomic force microscopy

Dynamic Atomic Force Microscopy (dAFM) is an extremely powerful tool for exploring surface topology and nanoscale manipulation and characterization. A feature of dAFM is the existence of highly nonlinear forces between a cantilever tip and sample. One of these forces that plays a large role in operation of AFM is the van der Waals (vdW) force....

Diamagnetically Levitated Resonant Mass Sensor: Master of Science Thesis

In the past few decades, there has been a growing demand for low-cost disposable sensors to be utilized in hazardous and toxic environments such as high temperature and chemically aggressive environments, which can lead to irreversible damage to the sensor. Moreover, by cost reduction, they become more attractive for utilization in developing...

Characterization and Dynamics of Diamagnetically Levitated Objects

From the earliest days, the phenomenon of levitation has always aroused the curiosity of humankind due to its mysterious and unique nature. Levitation systems are particularly interesting because of their non-contact characteristic which provides the possibility to isolate the levitated object from environmental effects like mechanical friction...