Free-standing high quality factor thin-film lithium niobate micro-photonic disk resonators

Lithium Niobate (LN or just niobate) thin-film micro-photonic resonators have promising prospects in many applications including high efficiency electro-optic modulators, optomechanics and nonlinear optics. This paper presents free-standing thin-film lithium niobate photonic resonators on a silicon platform using MEMS fabrication technology. We fabricated a 35um radius niobate disk resonator that exhibits high intrinsic optical quality factor (Q) of 484,000. Exploiting the optomechanical interaction from the released free-standing structure and high optical Q, we were able to demonstrate acousto-optic modulation from these devices by exciting a 56MHz radial breathing mechanical mode (mechanical Q of 2700) using a probe. © 2014 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (000.0000) General. References and links 1. R. S. Weis and T. K. Gaylord, “Lithium niobate: Summary of physical properties and crystal structure,” Appl. Phys. A. 37(4), 191–203 (1985). 2. E. L. Wooten, K. M. Kissa, A. Yi-Yan, E. J. Murphy, D. A. Lafaw, P. F. Hallemeier, D. Maack, D. V. Attanasio, D. J. Fritz, G. J. McBrien, and D. E. Bossi, “A review of lithium niobate modulators for fiber-optic communications systems” IEEE J. Selected Topics in Quantum Electron. 6(1), 69–82 (2000). 3. T. Fuji, J. Rauschenberger, A. Apolonski, V. S. Yakovlev, G. Tempea, T. Udem, C. Gohle, T. W. Hänsch, W. Lehnert, M. Scherer, and F. Krausz, “Monolithic carrier-envelope phase-stabilization scheme,” Opt. Lett. 30(3), 332–334 (2005). 4. A. Guarino, G. Poberaj, D. Rezzonico, R. Degl’Innocenti, and P. Gnter, “Electro-optically tunable microring resonators in lithium niobate,” Nature Photonics 1, 407-410 (2007). 5. H. Lu, B. Sadani, N. Courjal, G. Ulliac, N. Smith, V. Stenger, M. Collet, F. I. Baida, and M.-P. Bernal, “Enhanced electro-optical lithium niobate photonic crystal wire waveguide on a smart-cut thin film,” Opt. Express 20(3), 2974–2981 (2012). 6. P. Rabiei, J. Ma, S. Khan, J. Chiles, and S. Fathpour, “Heterogeneous lithium niobate photonics on silicon substrates,” Opt. Express 21(21), 25573–25581 (2013). 7. T. Wang, J. He, C. Lee, and H. Niu, “High-quality LiNbO3 microdisk resonators by undercut etching and surface tension reshaping,” Opt. Express 20(27), 28119–28127 (2012). 8. G. Nunzi Conti, S. Berneschi, F. Cosi, S. Pelli, S. Soria, G. C. Righini, M. Dispenza, and A. Secchi, “Planar coupling to high-Q lithium niobate disk resonators,” Opt. Express 19(4), 3651–3656 (2011). 9. L. Zhou and A. W. Poon, “Silicon electro-optic modulators using p-i-n diodes embedded 10-micron-diameter microdisk resonators,” Opt. Express 14(15), 6851-6857 (2006). 10. H. L. R. Lira, C. B. Poitras, and M. Lipson, “CMOS compatible reconfigurable filter for high bandwidth nonblocking operation,” Opt. Express 19(21), 20115-20121 (2011). 11. J. C. Hulme, J. K. Doylend, and J. E. Bowers, “Widely tunable Vernier ring laser on hybrid silicon,” Opt. Express 21(17), 19718-19722 (2013). 12. R. Wang, S. A. Bhave, and K. Bhattacharjee, “Thin-film high k2 t × Q multi-frequency lithhium niobate resonators,” 26th IEEE International Conference on MEMS, 165–168 (2013). ar X iv :1 40 9. 63 51 v1 [ ph ys ic s. op tic s] 2 2 Se p 20 14 13. D. Tulli, D. Janner, and V. Pruneri, “Room temperature direct bonding of LiNbO3 crystal layers and its application to high-voltage optical sensing,” J. Micromech. Microeng. 21(8), (2011). 14. T. J. Kippenberg and K. J. Vahala, “Cavity Optomechanics: Back-Action at the Mesoscale,” Science 321(5893), 1172–1176 (2008). 15. M. Cai, O. Painter, and K. J. Vahala, “Observation of Critical Coupling in a Fiber Taper to a Silica-Microsphere Whispering-Gallery Mode System,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 85(1), 74–77 (2000).