Damping of metallized bilayer nanomechanical resonators at room temperature

Maximilian J. Seitner, Katrin Gajo, Eva M. Weig

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13 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate the influence of gold thin-films subsequently deposited on a set of initially bare, doubly clamped, high-stress silicon nitride string resonators at room temperature. Analytical expressions for resonance frequency, quality factor and damping for both in- and out-of-plane flexural modes of the bilayer system are presented, which allows for the determination of effective elastic parameters of the composite structure from our experimental data. We find the inverse quality factor to scale linearly with the gold film thickness, indicating that the overall damping is governed by losses in the metal. Correspondingly, the mechanical linewidth increases by more than one order of magnitude compared to the bare silicon nitride string resonator. Furthermore, we extract mechanical quality factors of the gold film for both flexural modes and show that they can be enhanced by complete deposition of the metal in a single step, suggesting that surface and interface losses play a vital role in metal thin-films.

Original languageEnglish
Article number213101
JournalApplied Physics Letters
Volume105
Issue number21
DOIs
StatePublished - 24 Nov 2014
Externally publishedYes

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