Silicon Nitride MOMS Oscillator for Room Temperature Quantum Optomechanics

Enrico Serra*, Bruno Morana, Antonio Borrielli, Francesco Marin, Gregory Pandraud, Antonio Pontin, Giovanni Andrea Prodi, Pasqualina M. Sarro, Michele Bonaldi

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)
26 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Optomechanical SiN nano-oscillators in high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavities can be used to investigate the interaction between mechanical and optical degree of freedom for ultra-sensitive metrology and fundamental quantum mechanical studies. In this paper, we present a nano-oscillator made of a high-stress round-shaped SiN membrane with an integrated on-chip 3-D acoustic shield properly designed to reduce mechanical losses. This oscillator works in the range of 200 kHz to 5 MHz and features a mechanical quality factor of Q ≃ 107 and a Q-frequency product in excess of 6.2 × 1012 Hz at room temperature, fulfilling the minimum requirement for quantum ground-state cooling of the oscillator in an optomechanical cavity. The device is obtained by MEMS deep reactive-ion etching (DRIE) bulk micromachining with a two-side silicon processing on a silicon-on-insulator wafer. The microfabrication process is quite flexible such that additional layers could be deposited over the SiN membrane before the DRIE steps, if required for a sensing application. Therefore, such oscillator is a promising candidate for quantum sensing applications in the context of the emerging field of quantum technologies. 

Original languageEnglish
Article number8520914
Pages (from-to)1193-1203
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Microelectromechanical Systems
Volume27
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care
Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Keywords

  • MOMS oscillator
  • quantum optomechanics
  • reactive ion etching
  • SiN thin membrane

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