UC Santa Barbara

A fully-integrated optomechanical system is fabricated from a single layer of 400 nm thick stoichiometric LPCVD Si3N4 . Optomechanical coupling is demonstrated between single-mode optical ring resonators and nanomechanical resonators released using our novel ‘snap-release’ mechanism. This mechanism utilizes the high tensile stress of LPCVD Si3N4 to realize sub-50nm distances between optical ring resonators and the released ‘snap-release’ nanobeams (SRNBs). In this dissertation we present the design, fabrication, and characterization of this new optomechanical system.