Static and Dynamic Response of Carbon Nanotubebased Nano-Tweezers

Abstract in this paper static and dynamic responses of a nano-tweezer composed of two carbon nano-tube (cnt) arms are investigated. taking into account a continuum model and considering the electrostatic actuation as well as the presence of the van der waals forces, the static nonlinear equations are solved by a step by step linearization and galerkin projection method. simulating the closing dynamics of the nano-tweezer, the specified effective diameters of the nanotubes compared to existing experimental data. then by imposing a step dc voltage and taking into account the inertia effects, the dynamic responses and pull-in conditions of the nano-tweezer are studied. in the static and dynamic analysis, the effects of various parameters such as initial gap, length and diameter of the nanotubes on the pull-in conditions are investigated. also the effect of damping and asymmetric stiffness of the arms on the pull-in voltages of the nano-tweezer is reported. comparison of the results with the published experimental data shows that the use of continuum model and employing the galerkin based step by step linearization method (sslm) could effectively simulate the response of nano-tweezers.