Developing Flapping-Wings Based on Graphene Resonator for Nano-Ornithopter: Molecular Dynamics Simulation

Graphenes have recently become an emerging nanotechnology because of their extraordinary electrical ;and mechanical properties. So in this work, we investigate the graphene-nanoribbon (GNR)-resonator with wings via classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. MD simulations showed that the wings of the GNR-resonator were successfully flapped by resonating it with driving forces and its wing flapping motions were similar to those of the bird's flapping-wings. Although the GNR-resonator with wings in this work was clearly insufficient to be wings for an ornithopter in the nanoscale, MD simulations results showed that the GNR-resonators with wings had the possibility to develop the wing for flying nano-machine as a nano-ornithopter because the flapping and the bending movement of the wings could be easily generated by the small vibrations of the central body. The flapping speeds of the wings could be determined by both the wing span and the externally applied force. The resonance frequencies increased with increasing the driving force with the tunability of the flapping wings. This work offers novel prospects to develop and design graphene-based nano-machine or nano-robot models.