This paper presents the fabrication and characterisation of SiC flexural-mode structures able to operate as electro-thermo-mechanical tunable resonators. Single and double clamped beams, as well as circular structures, have been fabricated with aluminium (Al) and platinum (Pt) top electrodes. Electro-thermal excitation has been used for device actuation, resonant frequency tuning and mixing. Circular structures (i.e. disks) have been shown to possess higher resonant frequencies and Q-factors (up to ~23,000) compared to beams having similar dimensions. Tuning of the resonant frequency has been performed by varying the DC and AC component of the actuating voltage on SiC beams with u-shaped and slab Pt electrodes. When increasing the DC bias, frequency shift rates of about-11,000 ppm/V and-1,100 ppm/V are measured for the ushaped and slab electrodes, respectively. When increasing the amplitude of the AC input, shift rates of about-1,800 ppm/V and-800 ppm/V are measured. In addition, measurements have shown that the frequency shift rate increases with the ambient temperature. Electro-thermal mixing has been performed by applying two actuating voltages with the sum or difference of their frequencies matching the fundamental resonance of the SiC structure. Tuning of the electro-thermally mixed output singal has been demonstrated on a disk resonator.
Excimer-laser microetching of a variety of materials is applied to the fabrication of surface-relief optical microstructures of arbitrary morphology, with particular emphasis on computer-generated holographic structures. High-definition, high-radiation-intensity selective laser ablative etching in conjunction with step-and-repeat (period) replication or raster (pixel) scanning is used. To support such developments, the characteristic etching properties of a wide range of solid materials, from metals to semiconductors and polymers, are studied. Optical-interconnect and generic object holograms are produced by means of this alternative one-step holographic information-recording method.
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