Achievement

IGERT Fellow Roberto De Alba and his collaborators have fabricated micro- and nano-electromechanical (MEMS and NEMS) resonators from high-stress silicon nitride, demonstrating quality factors greater than 1 million – among the highest in the field. Mechanical resonators play an important role in many technologies, and high-performance M/NEMS resonators may find application in gas sensors, including explosives detection and disease diagnosis, or fundamental studies of quantum phenomena. These applications require low mechanical energy dissipation and thus high quality factor operation. Working with collaborator Ignacio Wilson-Rae, De Alba is studying the temperature dependence of mechanical losses in the devices to understand whether they exhibit the same “universal behavior” shown by all other glasses. Understanding energy losses in stressed membranes will pave the way for resonators of even higher quality in the future, opening the door for more demanding and sensitive applications.