Speaker
Description
Silicon carbide (SiC) is a material that could advance the field of nanomechanics thanks to its exceptional low internal damping. Even more exciting is the prospect of hybridising mechanics with the spin degrees of freedom of colour centres such as VSI, which opens up additional possibilities for quantum sensing and quantum communication.
However, the challenge lies in matching the frequency of a nanomechanical resonator with that of a spin when the resonance is as narrow as a single Hertz. We present recent experiments and results in continuation of high-quality-factor resonator studies [1,2] where the frequency of a monolithically fabricated single-crystal resonator is continuously tuned from approximately zero stress to more than 200 MPa. This analysis became possible by a thorough validation between simulation and experiment. The result of the first experiments is a 250% increase of the fundamental eigenfrequency and, simultaneously, a five-fold boost of the mechanical quality factor.
[1] A. Hochreiter, F. Groß, M.-N. Möller, M. Krieger, and H. B. Weber, Electrochemical etching strategy for shaping monolithic 3D structures from 4H-SiC wafers, Scientific Reports 13 (2023), DOI:10.1038/s41598-023-46110-2.
[2] A. Hochreiter, P. Bredol, F. David, B. Demiralp, H. B. Weber, and E. M. Weig, Monolithic 4H-SiC nanomechanical resonators with high intrinsic quality factors, Physical Review Applied 24 (2025), DOI:10.1103/vclj-v8qx.