Lithium Niobate Optomechanical 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.