Strong opto-electro-mechanical coupling in a silicon photonic crystal cavity

Abstract

We fabricate and characterize a microscale silicon opto-electromechanical system whose mechanical motion is coupled capacitively to an electrical circuit and optically via radiation pressure to a photonic crystal cavity. To achieve large electromechanical interaction strength, we implement an inverse shadow mask fabrication scheme which obtains capacitor gaps as small as 30 nm while maintaining a silicon surface quality necessary for minimizing optical loss. Using the sensitive optical read-out of the photonic crystal cavity, we characterize the linear and nonlinear capacitive coupling to the fundamental ω_m/2π = 63 MHz in-plane flexural motion of the structure, showing that the large electromechanical coupling in such devices may be suitable for realizing efficient microwave-to-optical signal conversion.