A novel, ultrahigh-sensitivity wide-range resonant micro-accelerometer using two differential double-clamped monolayer graphene beams is designed and investigated by steady-state simulation via COMSOL Multiphysics software in this paper. Along with stiffness-enhanced optimized folded support beams, two symmetrical 3-GPa prestressed graphene nano-beams serve as resonant sensitive elements with a size of 10 μm × 1 μm (length × width) to increase the acceleration sensitivity while extending the measurement range. The simulation results show that the accelerometer with cascade-connected graphene and proof-mass assembly exhibits the ultrahigh sensitivity of 21,224 Hz/g and quality factor of 9773 in the range of 0–1000 g. This is remarkably superior to previously reported studies characterized by attaching proof mass to the graphene components directly. The proposed accelerometer shows great potential as an alternative to quartz and silicon-based resonant sensors in high-impact and highly sensitive inertial measurement applications.

Herein, a peripherally clamped stretched square monolayer graphene sheet with a side length of 10 nm was demonstrated as a resonator for atomic-scale mass sensing via molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Then, a novel method of mass determination using the first three resonant modes (mode11, mode21 and mode22) was developed to avoid the disturbance of stress fluctuation in graphene. MD simulation results indicate that improving the prestress in stretched graphene increases the sensitivity significantly. Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine the mass accurately by the stress-reliant fundamental frequency shift. However, the absorbed mass in the middle of graphene sheets decreases the resonant frequency of mode11 dramatically while having negligible effect on that of mode21 and mode22, which implies that the latter two frequency modes are appropriate for compensating the stress-induced frequency shift of mode11. Hence, the absorbed mass, with a resolution of 3.3 × 10⁻²² g, is found using the frequency ratio of mode11 to mode21 or mode22, despite the unstable prestress ranging from 32 GPa to 47 GPa. This stress insensitivity contributes to the applicability of the graphene-based resonant mass sensor in real applications.

Edge mode could disturb the ultra-subtle mass detection for graphene resonators. Herein, classical molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate the effect of edge mode on mass sensing for a doubly clamped strained graphene resonator. Compared with the fundamental mode, the localized vibration of edge mode shows a lower frequency with a constant frequency gap of 32.6 GHz, despite the mutable inner stress ranging from 10 to 50 GPa. Furthermore, the resonant frequency of edge mode is found to be insensitive to centrally located adsorbed mass, while the frequency of the fundamental mode decreases linearly with increasing adsorbates. Thus, a mass determination method using the difference of these two modes is proposed to reduce interferences for robust mass measurement. Moreover, molecular dynamics simulations demonstrate that a stronger prestress or a higher width–length ratio of about 0.8 could increase the low-quality factor induced by edge mode, thus improving the performance in mass sensing for graphene resonators.

Graphene resonant sensors have shown strong competitiveness with respect to sensitivity and size. To advance the applications of graphene resonant sensors, the damage behaviors of graphene harmonic oscillators after thermal annealing and laser irradiation were investigated by morphology analysis and frequency domain vibration characteristics. The interface stress was proven to be the key factor that directly affected the yield of resonators. The resulting phenomenon could be improved by appropriately controlling the annealing temperature and size of resonators, thereby achieving membrane intactness of up to 96.4%. However, micro-cracks were found on the graphene sheets when continuous wave (CW) laser power was more than 4 mW. Moreover, the fluctuating light energy would also cause mechanical fatigue in addition to the photothermal effect, and the threshold damage power for the sinusoidally modulated laser was merely 2 mW. In this way, based on the amplitude-frequency surface morphology of the graphene resonator, the thermal time constant of the order of a few microseconds was confirmed to evaluate the damage of the graphene oscillator in situ and in real time, which could be further extended for those resonators using other 2D materials.

An opto-thermally excited optical fiber Fabry-Perot (F-P) resonant probe with suspended clamped circular graphene diaphragm is presented in this paper. Then, the dependence of resonance frequency behaviors of graphene diaphragm upon opto-mechanical factors including membrane properties, laser excitation parameters and film boundary conditions are investigated via COMSOL Multiphysics simulation. The results show that the radius and thickness of membrane will linearly affect the optical fiber light-induced temperature distribution, thus resulting in rapidly decreasing resonance frequency changes with the radius-to-thickness ratio. Moreover, the prestress can be regulated in the range of 10⁸ Pa to 10⁹ Pa by altering the environmental temperature with a scale factor of 14.2 MPa/K. It is important to note that the availability of F-P resonant probe with a defective clamped circular graphene membrane can be improved notably by fabricating the defected circular membrane to a double-end clamped beam, which gives a broader perspective to characterize the resonance performance of opto-thermally excited F-P resonators.

In this study, a graphene beam was selected as a sensing element and used to form a graphene resonant gyroscope structure with direct frequency output and ultrahigh sensitivity. The structure of the graphene resonator gyroscope was simulated using the ANSYS finite element software, and the influence of the length, width, and thickness of the graphene resonant beam on the angular velocity sensitivity was studied. The simulation results show that the resonant frequency of the graphene resonant beam decreased with increasing the beam length and thickness, while the width had a negligible effect. The fundamental frequency of the designed graphene resonator gyroscope was more than 20 MHz, and the sensitivity of the angular velocity was able to reach 22,990 Hz/°/h. This work is of great significance for applications in environments that require high sensitivity to extremely weak angular velocity variation.