Mechanics of fullerene-carbon nanotube bundle oscillators

Abstract

Carbon nanostructures, such as nanotubes and fullerenes, are of considerableinterest to a wide range of research communities. Owing to their unique properties, a numberof applications involving these structures have been proposed, one of which is the so-callednano-scaled oscillators, for which the resultant oscillatory frequencies are in the gigahertzrange. The phenomena of the gigahertz oscillations have also led to the possible creation offuture devices, such as ultra-fast optical filters and ultra-sensitive nano-antennae. In thispaper we present recent developments in this area and review the authors recent work,where we investigate the mechanics of a new type of gigahertz oscillator comprising afullerene C60 oscillating within the centre of a uniform concentric ring or bundle of carbonnanotubes. Using the Lennard-Jones potential and the continuum approach, for which carbonatoms are assumed to be uniformly distributed across the surface of a molecule, we providethe underlying mechanisms of these nano-scaled oscillators.