Nanometre-scale measurements have revealed, with record precision, how atom-thick layers of carbon called graphene vibrate vertically.

Paul Thibado of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and his colleagues used a scanning tunnelling microscope to study how a free-standing sheet of graphene moves owing to random thermal fluctuations, on the scale of a single atom. They found that over nearly 3 hours, the membrane continually vibrates by as much as 10 nanometres, interposed with occasional larger flips as the sheet inverts its curvature. The team also used current from the microscope tip to control and enhance the motion.

Such vibrations could one day be exploited on a large scale in applications such as nanoscale power generation.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 126801 (2016)