Clamp-tapering increases the quality factor of stressed nanobeams

Abstract

Stressed nanomechanical resonators are known to have exceptionally high quality factors ($Q$) due to the dilution of intrinsic dissipation by stress. Typically, the amount of dissipation dilution and thus the resonator $Q$ is limited by the high mode curvature region near the clamps. Here we study the effect of clamp geometry on the $Q$ of nanobeams made of high-stress $\mathrm{S}{\mathrm{i}}_3{\mathrm{N}}_4$. We find that tapering the beam near the clamp - and locally increasing the stress - leads to increased $Q$ of MHz-frequency low order modes due to enhanced dissipation dilution. Contrary to recent studies of tethered-membrane resonators, we find that widening the clamps leads to decreased $Q$ despite increased stress in the beam bulk. The tapered-clamping approach has practical advantages compared to the recently developed "soft-clamping" technique. Tapered-clamping enhances the $Q$ of the fundamental mode and can be implemented without increasing the device size.

References in corpus (21)

• Strong dispersive coupling of a high finesse cavity to a micromechanical membrane
• Measurement-based quantum control of mechanical motion
• Strong Optomechanical Squeezing of Light
• Strong and Tunable Nonlinear Optomechanical Coupling in a Low-Loss System
• Ultra-coherent nanomechanical resonators via soft clamping and dissipation dilution
• Observation of Radiation Pressure Shot Noise on a Macroscopic Object
• Measurement and control of a mechanical oscillator at its thermal decoherence rate
• Mechanical Resonators for Quantum Optomechanics Experiments at Room Temperature
• Cavity optomechanics with stoichiometric SiN films
• Damping of Nanomechanical Resonators
• Laser cooling of a micromechanical membrane to the quantum backaction limit
• Ultralow-Noise SiN Trampoline Resonators for Sensing and Optomechanics
• Evidence of surface loss as ubiquitous limiting damping mechanism in SiN micro- and nanomechanical resonators
• Silicon nitride membrane resonators at millikelvin temperatures with quality factors exceeding $10^8$
• Near-field integration of a SiN nanobeam and a SiO${}_2$ microcavity for Heisenberg-limited displacement sensing
• Demonstration of suppressed phonon tunneling losses in phononic bandgap shielded membrane resonators for high-Q optomechanics
• Frequency and Q-factor control of nanomechanical resonators
• Signatures of two-level defects in the temperature-dependent damping of nanomechanical silicon nitride resonators
• Stress control of tensile-strained In${}_{1-x}$Ga${}_x$P nanomechanical string resonators
• Effect of oxygen plasma on nanomechanical silicon nitride resonators
• Integrated tuning fork nanocavity optomechanical transducers with high $f_M{Q}_M$ product and stress-engineered frequency tuning

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Strained crystalline nanomechanical resonators with ultralow dissipation
• Nanomechanical Dissipation and Strain Engineering
• Fractal-like mechanical resonators with soft-clamped fundamental mode
• Engineering the dissipation of crystalline micromechanical resonators
• Nanomechanical resonators with ultra-high-$Q$ perimeter modes
• High-Strength Amorphous Silicon Carbide for Nanomechanics
• Influence of clamp-widening on the quality factor of nanomechanical silicon nitride resonators
• High-Q trampoline resonators from strained crystalline InGaP for integrated free-space optomechanics
• Silicon-nitride nanosensors toward room temperature quantum optomechanics
• Programmable Quantum Processors based on Spin Qubits with Mechanically-Mediated Interactions and Transport
• Nanomechanical crystalline AlN resonators with high quality factors for quantum optoelectromechanics
• Universal length dependence of tensile stress in nanomechanical string resonators
• High Q-Factor Silicon Nitride Nanomechanical Resonators Fabricated by Maskless Femtosecond Laser Micro-machining
• Ultra-coherent nanomechanical resonators based on inverse design
• Relaxation and dynamics of high-stress pre-displaced string resonators
• Topology optimization of high-performance optomechanical resonator
• Mechanical dissipation by substrate-mode coupling in SiN resonators