Effect of Surface Chemistry on Mechanical Energy Dissipation:  Silicon Oxidation Does Not Inherently Decrease the Quality Factor

Richter, Amy M.; Sengupta, Debodhonyaa; Hines, Melissa A.

doi:10.1021/jp073967z

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…The improved performance is likely due to cleaner device surfaces in the absence of any liquid contact. Consistent with [39], chain length-matched alkene and aldehyde gave similar Q at room temperature. At low temperature, we found the alkyl monolayer to be slightly superior to the alkoxide monolayer.…”

mentioning

confidence: 54%

Permanent reduction of dissipation in nanomechanical Si resonators by chemical surface protection

et al. 2015

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We report on mechanical dissipation measurements carried out on thin (∼100 nm), single-crystal silicon cantilevers with varying chemical surface termination. We find that the 1-2 nm-thick native oxide layer of silicon contributes about 85% to the friction of the mechanical resonance. We show that the mechanical friction is proportional to the thickness of the oxide layer and that it crucially depends on oxide formation conditions. We further demonstrate that chemical surface protection by nitridation, liquid-phase hydrosilylation, or gas-phase hydrosilylation can inhibit rapid oxide formation in air and results in a permanent improvement of the mechanical quality factor between three-and five-fold. This improvement extends to cryogenic temperatures. Presented recipes can be directly integrated with standard cleanroom processes and may be especially beneficial for ultrasensitive nanomechanical force-and mass sensors, including silicon cantilevers, membranes, or nanowires.

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confidence: 54%

Permanent reduction of dissipation in nanomechanical Si resonators by chemical surface protection

et al. 2015

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“…Reducing the size of the resonators is challenging as it is directly correlated with reducing the quality factor 10 . Therefore, with the advent of Micro-and Nano-ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS/NEMS), much work has been directed towards artificially improving the quality factor: On the one hand, using passive approaches, including acoustic reflectors 11 , geometry optimization 12 , surface treatments 13 and dissipation dilution due to intrinsic stress 14 . All of them genuinely increase the quality factor, thus reducing the amount of thermomechanical noise (in force) allowed to enter the system; On the other hand, we have the so-called active approaches, mainly parametric pumping (tuning the resonance frequency at twice the rate of said frequency) [15][16] and feedback proportional to the velocity 17 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the effect of linear feedback and parametric pumping on a resonator’s frequency stability

et al. 2020

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Resonant sensors based on micro- and nano-electro mechanical systems (M/NEMS) are ubiquitous in many sensing applications due to their outstanding performance capabilities, which are directly proportional to the quality factor (Q) of the devices. We address here a recurrent question in the field: do dynamical techniques that modify the effective Q (namely parametric pumping and direct drive velocity feedback) affect the performance of said sensors? We develop analytical models of both cases, while remaining in the linear regime, and introduce noise in the system from two separate sources: thermomechanical and amplifier (read-out) noise. We observe that parametric pumping enhances the quality factor in the amplitude response, but worsens it in the phase response on the resonator. In the case of feedback, we find that Q is enhanced in both cases. Then, we establish a solution for the noisy problem with direct drive and parametric pumping simultaneously. We also find that, in the case when thermomechanical noise dominates, no benefit can be obtained from either artificial Q-enhancement technique. However, in the case when amplifier noise dominates, we surprisingly observe that a significant advantage can only be achieved using parametric pumping in the squeezing region.

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“…To investigate the role of silicon-oxygen bonds, the performance of dodecoxy-(C 12 H 25 O-) and dodecyl-(C 12 H 25 -) resonators were compared. 18 These monolayers differ by a single Si-O-C linkage at the interface. Nearly-identical performance was observed for these two surface terminations.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of surface chemistry on the quality factors of micromechanical resonators

2011

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Single monolayers of molecules were found to strongly affect the quality factors of MHz-range torsional silicon resonators. By changing a single monolayer of molecules on the surface of a 5-µm-wide, 250-nm-thick silicon resonator less than 0.07% of the total mass the quality factor of the resonator was increased by 70%. In contrast, the standard commercial coating, a thin layer of silicon oxide, dissipates at least 75% of the mechanical energy in similarly sized resonators. Since the relative importance of these surface chemical losses scales with the resonator's surface-to-volume ratio, the development of low-loss, stable surface chemistries will be important for the production of high-performance micro-and nano-mechanical devices.

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Effect of Surface Chemistry on Mechanical Energy Dissipation: Silicon Oxidation Does Not Inherently Decrease the Quality Factor

Cited by 7 publications

References 36 publications

Permanent reduction of dissipation in nanomechanical Si resonators by chemical surface protection

Permanent reduction of dissipation in nanomechanical Si resonators by chemical surface protection

On the effect of linear feedback and parametric pumping on a resonator’s frequency stability

Effect of surface chemistry on the quality factors of micromechanical resonators

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