Effect of oxygen plasma on nanomechanical silicon nitride resonators

Abstract

Precise control of tensile stress and intrinsic damping is crucial for the optimal design of nanomechanical systems for sensor applications and quantum optomechanics in particular. In this letter we study the in uence of oxygen plasma on the tensile stress and intrinsic damping of nanomechanical silicon nitride resonators. Oxygen plasma treatments are common steps in micro and nanofabrication. We show that oxygen plasma of only a few minutes oxidizes the silicon nitride surface, creating several nanometer thick silicon dioxide layers with a compressive stress of 1.30(16)GPa. Such oxide layers can cause a reduction of the e ective tensile stress of a 50 nm thick stoichiometric silicon nitride membrane by almost 50%. Additionally, intrinsic damping linearly increases with the silicon dioxide lm thickness. An oxide layer of 1.5nm grown in just 10s in a 50W oxygen plasma almost doubled the intrinsic damping. The oxide surface layer can be e ciently removed in bu ered HF.

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Single-molecule optical absorption imaging by nanomechanical photothermal sensing at room temperature
• Clamp-tapering increases the quality factor of stressed nanobeams
• Influence of clamp-widening on the quality factor of nanomechanical silicon nitride resonators
• Propagation and imaging of mechanical waves in a highly-stressed single-mode phononic waveguide
• Thermal transport and frequency response of localized modes on low-stress nanomechanical silicon nitride drums featuring a phononic bandgap structure
• Thickness dependence of the mechanical properties of piezoelectric high-$Q_m$ nanomechanical resonators made from aluminium nitride