Phonon Tunneling Loss Solver for Micro- and Nanomechanical Resonators

Microand nanoscale mechanical resonators have emerged as ubiquitous devices for application in a wide range of technical disciplines including communications, sensing, metrology, and fundamental scientific endeavors. In many instances the performance of these devices is limited by the deleterious effects of mechanical damping. To further compound this limitation, the quantitative understanding of these damping mechanisms remains elusive in many cases. Here, we report a significant advancement towards predicting and controlling support-induced losses, a key dissipation mechanism in high-quality-factor mechanical resonators. Utilizing COMSOL multiphysics, we have developed an efficient FEM-enabled solver, employing the recently introduced “phonontunneling” approach. With this solver we demonstrate the ability to predict the designlimited damping of generic mechanical resonators, yielding excellent agreement with experimental measurements. Thus, our phonontunneling solver represents a major step towards accurate prediction of the mechanical quality factor in microand nanomechanical resonators.