Photon Pressure Detector Array

Science Advances publishes a paper "On-chip torsion balances with femtonewton force resolution at room temperature enabled by carbon nanotube and graphene" by Lin Cong, Zi Yuan, Zaiqiao Bai, Xinhe Wang, Wei Zhao, Xinyu Gao, Xiaopeng Hu, Peng Liu, Wanlin Guo, Qunqing Li, Shoushan Fan, and Kaili Jiang from Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, Beihang University, No. 58th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Research Group Corporation, Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The paper presents a 4 x 4 array detecting photon pressure:

"The torsion balance, consisting of a rigid balance beam suspended by a fine thread, is an ancient scientific instrument, yet it is still a very sensitive force sensor to date. As the force sensitivity is proportional to the lengths of the beam and thread, but inversely proportional to the fourth power of the diameter of the thread, nanomaterials should be ideal building blocks for torsion balances. Here, we report a torsional balance array on a chip with the highest sensitivity level enabled by using a carbon nanotube as the thread and a monolayer graphene coated with Al nanofilms as the beam and mirror. It is demonstrated that the femtonewton force exerted by a weak laser can be easily measured. The balances on the chip should serve as an ideal platform for investigating fundamental interactions up to zeptonewton in accuracy in the near future."