Universal length dependence of tensile stress in nanomechanical string resonators

Abstract

We investigate the tensile stress in freely suspended nanomechanical string resonators, and observe a material-independent dependence on the resonator length. We compare strongly stressed sting resonators fabricated from four different material systems based on amorphous silicon nitride, crystalline silicon carbide as well as crystalline indium gallium phosphide. The tensile stress is found to increase by approximately 50% for shorter resonators. We establish a simple elastic model to describe the observed length dependence of the tensile stress. The model accurately describes our experimental data. This opens a perspective for stress-engineering the mechanical quality factor of nanomechanical string resonators.

References in corpus (7)

• Strong dispersive coupling of a high finesse cavity to a micromechanical membrane
• A Mechanical Mass Sensor with Yoctogram Resolution
• Sympathetic cooling of a membrane oscillator in a hybrid mechanical-atomic system
• Light-mediated strong coupling between a mechanical oscillator and atomic spins one meter apart
• Quasi-two-dimensional optomechanical crystals with a complete phononic bandgap
• Nonlinear Nanomechanical Mass Spectrometry at the Single-Nanoparticle Level
• Spatial modulation of nonlinear flexural vibrations of membrane resonators