Annealing and Extended Etching Improve a Torsional Resonator for Thin Film Internal Friction Measurements
- Resource Type
- article
- Authors
- Metcalf, Thomas; Liu, Xiao; Abernathy, Matthew Robert
- Source
- Materials Research. January 2018 21(2)
- Subject
- Thin film internal friction
silicon internal friction
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 1516-1439
We evaluate two methods to improve the background internal friction of the Double Paddle Oscillator (DPO), which has a nominal low temperature value of Q-1 ≈ 2×10-8. We find that annealing the DPO in vacuum at 300°C for 3 hours systematically reduced Q-1 at all temperatures and revealed a 100K internal friction peak by permanently removing it. We also find a striking decrease of low temperature Q-1 as the DPO geometry is altered through extended etching. This decrease is evaluated via Finite Element Method modeling in terms of mode mixing and attachment loss.