Diamond nanothread based resonators: ultrahigh sensitivity and low dissipation

The recently synthesized ultrathin diamond nanothreads (NTHs) exhibit a variety of intriguing properties and are probably the most successful of many encouraging applications to be designed as resonators due to their ultrahigh sensitivity and low dissipation. Herein, we report via molecular dynamics that diamond nanothreads possess not only ultrahigh mass sensitivity but also a very high quality factor. On the one hand, the studied diamond nanothreads demonstrate an extreme mass resolution of similar to 0.58 yg (1 yg = 10(-24) g), which is almost one order of magnitude higher than that of carbon nanotubes (similar to 10 yg) with the same length. Moreover, the sensing performance of NTHs is highly tunable owing to their tailorable structures. On the other hand, NTHs exhibit a very low intrinsic energy dissipation and thus a high quality factor which is generally two times that of carbon nanotubes. These intriguing features suggest that diamond nanothreads could be highly attractive candidates for fabricating nano-sized mechanical resonators with outstanding performance.