Utilizing mechanical strain to mitigate the intrinsic loss mechanisms in oscillating metal nanowires.

We utilize classical molecular dynamics to study energy dissipation (the Q factors) of doubly clamped copper nanowire nanoresonators undergoing flexural oscillations. We find that the application of tensile strain effectively mitigates both the intrinsic surface and thermal losses, with improvements in Q by a factor of 3-10 across a range of operating temperatures. We also find that the nanowire Q factors are not dependent on the surface area to volume ratio, but instead their aspect ratio, and that the Q factors exhibit a 1/T(0.70) dependence on the temperature T that is independent of strain.