Nanomechanical vibrational response from electrical mixing measurements

Abstract

Driven nanomechanical resonators based on low-dimensional materials are routinely and efficiently detected with electrical mixing measurements. However, the measured signal is a non-trivial combination of the mechanical eigenmode displacement and an electrical contribution, which makes the extraction of the driven mechanical response challenging. Here, we report a simple yet reliable method to extract solely the driven mechanical vibrations by eliminating the contribution of pure electrical origin. This enables us to measure the spectral mechanical response as well as the driven quadratures of motion. This method is crucial for nanomechanical vibrations in the nonlinear regime, since the shape of the mechanical response depends on the physics at work. We further show how to calibrate the measured signal into units of displacement. Our method marks a key step forward in the study of nanoelectromechanical resonators based on low-dimensional materials in the nonlinear regime.