Large-scale flexible-resonators with temperature insensitivity employing superoleophobic substrates.

Area of Science:

• Optoelectronics
• Materials Science

Background:

• Whispering gallery mode (WGM) polymer resonators offer competitive performance but are limited by thermal sensitivity and small size.
• Applications like high-precision optical gyroscopes require enhanced stability and reduced thermal effects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a fabrication method for large-scale polymer resonators with improved thermal stability.
• To achieve high quality factors (Q > 10^5) in polymer resonators for chip-based applications.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of NOA65 polymer resonators using a superoleophobic technique.
• Utilizing a sandwich structure core layer for flexible remodeling and maintaining low surface roughness (<1 nm) over large diameter changes (>25%).

Main Results:

• Achieved resonators with quality factors exceeding 10^5.
• Demonstrated that external pressure tuning can significantly alter the equivalent thermal expansion coefficient (2x10^-4 /°C to 0.9x10^-4 /°C).
• Observed a temperature response range of 0.12 nm/°C to -0.056 nm/°C, indicating potential for temperature-insensitive operation.

Conclusions:

• The proposed method enables the fabrication of large-scale, high-Q polymer resonators on a chip.
• The developed resonators exhibit tunable thermal expansion, paving the way for temperature-insensitive optical devices.