Polarimetric analysis of stress anisotropy in nanomechanical silicon nitride resonators

Abstract

We realise a circular gray-field polariscope to image stress-induced birefringence in thin (submicron thick) silicon nitride (SiN) membranes and strings. This enables quantitative mapping of the orientation of principal stresses and stress anisotropy, complementary to, and in agreement with, finite element modeling (FEM). Furthermore, using a sample with a well known stress anisotropy, we extract a new value for the photoelastic (Brewster) coefficient of silicon nitride, $C\approx (3.4\pm 0.1)\times 10^{-6}{\mathrm{MPa}}^{-1}$. We explore possible applications of the method to analyse and quality-control stressed membranes with phononic crystal patterns

References in corpus (5)

• Observation of Radiation Pressure Shot Noise on a Macroscopic Object
• High quality mechanical and optical properties of commercial silicon nitride membranes
• Control of microwave signals using circuit nano-electromechanics
• Intrinsic dissipation in nanomechanical resonators due to phonon tunneling
• From membrane-in-the-middle to mirror-in-the-middle with a high-reflectivity sub-wavelength grating

Cited by in corpus (9)

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• Profilometry and stress analysis of suspended nanostructured thin films
• Mechanical investigations of free-standing SiN membranes patterned with one-dimensional photonic crystal structures
• Quantum coherent microwave-optical transduction using high overtone bulk acoustic resonances
• Portable Real-Time Polarimeter for Partially and Fully Polarized Light