Quality factors of one million in graphene based mechanical resonators

J. Güttinger, P. Weber, A. Noury, C. Lagoin, J. Moser and A. Bachtold

ICFO-Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, Av. Carl Friedrich Gauss 3, 08860 Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain

Crystalline, low-dimensional materials combine unique and widely tunable electrical, mechanical and optical properties. The combination lends itself naturally for ultrasensitive transduction of energy or information in sensing and quantum applications. A key criterion is a high mechanical quality factor, which provides long lifetimes of mechanical states and allows for high precision sensing. We present first measurements of the intrinsic dissipation in graphene based mechanical resonators measured with time resolved ring-down measurements and observe quality factors over 1 Million at a resonance frequency of 50 MHz. The corresponding millisecond lifetimes in combination with the coupling of the mechanical resonator to a superconducting cavity makes these devices attractive as quantum transducers.