Abstract

Modern technologies rely on miniature structures that are essential to countless devices enabling communication, sensing, computation, and medical applications. Micro- and nanomechanical systems are embedded in a wide range of transduction and sensing technologies, making them nearly ubiquitous in contemporary products. Beyond their commercial impact across diverse fields, fundamental research continues to push the boundaries of their remarkable capabilities. However, the ongoing pursuit of miniaturization and improved performance makes the engineering of these devices increasingly complex, with nonlinearities playing a pivotal role in their design and operation. This talk delves into unconventional dynamical phenomena observed in one- and twodimensional carbon-based nanodevices. I will report that a carbon nanotube can exhibit nonhysteretic bistability, where self-oscillations coexist with a quiet state, a novel phenomenon previously unreported in the field of nanomechanics. Then, I will show that graphene resonators, when driven into the nonlinear regime of motion and modulated by a slow signal in the presence of noise, give rise to exotic switching dynamical paths. These newly observed dynamical regimes, along with the methods used to reveal them, are generic and applicable to a broad range of mesoscopic vibrational systems. They offer new opportunities for sensing applications and for enhancing weak signals through stochastic resonance.