Silicon double-disk optomechanical resonators from wafer-scale double-layered silicon-on-insulator.

Abstract

Whispering Gallery Mode (WGM) optomechanical resonators are a promising technology for the simultaneous control and measurement of optical and mechanical degrees of freedom at the nanoscale. They offer potential for use across a wide range of applications such as sensors and quantum transducers. Double-disk WGM resonators, which host strongly interacting mechanical and optical modes co-localized around their circumference, are particularly attractive due to their high optomechanical coupling. Large-scale integrated fabrication of silicon double-disk WGM resonators has not previously been demonstrated. In this work, we present a process for the fabrication of double-layer silicon-on-insulator wafers, which we then use to fabricate functional optomechanical double silicon disk resonators with on-chip optical coupling. The integrated devices present experimentally observed optical quality factors of the order of 10⁵ and a single-photon optomechanical coupling of approximately 15 kHz.