We have fabricated polycrystalline diamond hemispheres by hot-filament CVD (HFCVD) in spherical cavities wet-etched into a high temperature glass substrate CTE matched to silicon. Hemispherical resonators 1.4 mm in diameter have a Q of up to 143 000 in the fundamental wineglass mode, for a ringdown time of 2.4 s. Without trimming, resonators have the two degenerate wineglass modes frequency matched as close as 2 Hz, or 0.013% of the resonant frequency (~16 kHz). Laser trimming was used to match resonant modes on hemispheres to 0.3 Hz. Experimental and FEA energy loss studies on cantilevers and hemispheres examine various energy loss mechanisms, showing that surface related losses are dominant. Diamond cantilevers with a Q of 400 000 and a ringdown time of 15.4 s were measured, showing the potential of polycrystalline diamond films for high Q resonators. These resonators show great promise for use as hemispherical resonant gyroscopes (HRGs) on a chip.

In this paper we report the fabrication of hemispherical polycrystalline diamond resonators fabricated on a novel high-temperature glass substrate. The hemispherical resonator gyroscope is one of the most accurate and rugged of the mechanical gyroscopes, and can be operated in either rate or whole-angle mode due to its high degree of symmetry. A fabrication sequence for creating extremely symmetric 3D MEMS hemispheres is presented. Mode shapes and frequencies obtained with a laser vibrometer are shown, as well as curves of Q versus pressure, and the dependence of frequency on anchor size. Fundamental mode frequency matching to <0.1% in as-fabricated devices has been achieved, which is essential to gyroscope operation in whole-angle mode.

We report the design and operation of a surface-emitting surface acoustic wave (SAW) acousto-optical modulator which behaves as a cm-scale linear hologram in response to an applied electronic waveform. The modulator is formed by an optical waveguide, transducer, and out-coupling surface grating on a 1 mm-thick lithium niobate substrate. We demonstrate the ability to load and illuminate a 9-region linear hologram into the modulator's 8 mm-long interaction region using applied waveforms of 280–320 MHz. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a monolithically-integrated, surface-emitting SAW modulator fabricated using lithographic techniques. Applications include practical implementations of a holographic display.

No abstract

This work describes the development and fabrication of a novel nanofluidic flow-through sensing chip that utilizes a plasmonic resonator to excite fluorescent tags with sub-wavelength resolution. We cover the design of the microfluidic chip and simulation of the plasmonic resonator using Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) software. The fabrication methods are presented, with testing procedures and preliminary results. This research is aimed at improving the resolution limits of the Direct Linear Analysis (DLA) technique developed by US Genomics [1]. In DLA, intercalating dyes which tag a specific 8 base-pair sequence are inserted in a DNA sample. This sample is pumped though a nano-fluidic channel, where it is stretched into a linear geometry and interrogated with light which excites the fluorescent tags. The resulting sequence of optical pulses produces a characteristic "fingerprint" of the sample which uniquely identifies any sample of DNA. Plasmonic confinement of light to a 100 nm wide metallic nano-stripe enables resolution of a higher tag density compared to free space optics.Prototype devices have been fabricated and are being tested with fluorophore solutions and tagged DNA. Preliminary results show evanescent coupling to the plasmonic resonator is occurring with 0.1 micron resolution, however light scattering limits the S/N of the detector. Two methods to reduce scattered light are presented: index matching and curved waveguides.