Effects of pressure on suspended micromechanical membrane arrays

Abstract

The effects of pressure on micromechanical air-filled cavities made by a pair of suspended, parallel silicon nitride membranes are investigated in the free molecular and quasi-molecular regimes. Variations of the fundamental drummode mechanical resonant frequencies and damping with air pressure are determined by means of optical interferometry. A kinetic damping linear friction force and a positive resonant frequency shift due to the compression of the fluid between the membranes are observed to be proportional with pressure in the range 0.01-10 mbars. For resonators with near-degenerate modes hybridization of the modes due to this squeeze film effect is also observed and well accounted for by a simple spring-coupled oscillator model.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Strong dispersive coupling of a high finesse cavity to a micromechanical membrane
• Heat transport in harmonic oscillator systems with correlated baths: Application to optomechanical arrays
• Hybrid cavity mechanics with doped systems

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Propagation and imaging of mechanical waves in a highly-stressed single-mode phononic waveguide
• Stress-controlled frequency tuning and parametric amplification of the vibrations of coupled nanomembranes
• Mechanical investigations of free-standing SiN membranes patterned with one-dimensional photonic crystal structures