1 Million-Q Optomechanical Microdisk Resonators with Very Large Scale Integration

Abstract

Cavity optomechanics have become a promising route towards the development of ultrasensitive sensors for a wide range of applications including mass, chemical and biological sensing. We demonstrate the potential of Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) with state-of-the-art low-loss performance silicon optomechanical microdisks for real-world applications. We report microdisks exhibiting optical Whispering Gallery Modes (WGM) with 1 million quality factors. These high-Q microdisks allow their Brownian motion to be resolved at few 100 MHz in ambient air. Such performance shows our VLSI process is a viable approach for the next generation of high-end sensors operating in vacuum, gas or liquid phase.

Keywords

• optomechanics
• microdisk resonators
• quality factor
• whispering gallery mode
• radial breathing mode
• very large scale integration