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Updated: May 24, 2026
Fabrication of Silica Ultra High Quality Factor Microresonators
Published on: July 2, 2012
Tailoring the interface of hybrid microresonators in viscid fluids enhances their quality factor by two orders of
Egbert Oesterschulze1, Peter Kehrbusch, Bernhard Radzio
1Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Physics and Technology of Nanostructures, Erwin-Schrödinger Strasse 46, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany. oester@physik.uni-kl.de
Abstract:
The application of microresonators in fluids is predominantly constrained by the strong damping caused by the viscid drag and the additional inertia of the liquid in the interfacial layer. In this paper we propose the new concept of partial wetting that exploits another property of liquids, its surface energy, to adapt physically the interface of the microresonator to the liquid by the formation of a meniscus. First experiments performed with technically simple batch-fabricated prototypes validate the potential of partial wetting as a vital route to improve the quality factor of microresonators in viscid fluids to values up to 600 exceeding those of conventional microresonators by almost two orders of magnitude.
