Strained crystalline nanomechanical resonators with ultralow dissipation

A. Beccari, D.A. Visani, S. A. Fedorov, M. J. Bereyhi, V. Boureau, G. Huang, A. Arabmoheghi, and T. J. Kippenberg
EPFL, Switzerland

In strained mechanical resonators, the concurrence of tensile stress and geometric nonlinearity dramatically reduces dissipation. This phenomenon, called dissipation dilution, is employed in mirror suspensions of gravitational-wave interferometers and at the nanoscale, where soft clamping and strain engineering have allowed extremely high quality factors. However, these techniques have so far been applied only to amorphous materials, specifically Si3N4. Crystalline materials exhibit substantially lower intrinsic damping at cryogenic temperatures. Applying dissipation dilution engineering to strained crystalline materials could, therefore, enable extremely low loss nanomechanical resonators, as they combine low internal friction, high intrinsic strain and high yield strength. This potential has not yet been fully exploited. Here we demonstrate that single-crystal strained silicon—a material developed for high-mobility transistors—can be used to realize mechanical resonators with ultralow dissipation. We fabricate strained silicon nanostrings with high aspect ratios supporting megahertz mechanical modes with quality factors exceeding 1010 at 7 K, a tenfold improvement over values reported in Si3N4. We estimate a thermal-noise-limited force sensitivity of (5 ± 2) × 10–20 N Hz–1/2 at 7 K—approaching that of carbon nanotubes—and a heating rate of only 60 quanta per second. The low mass and high quality factors of our nanomechanical resonators make them particularly promising for quantum sensing and transduction.