Ultrabroadband and sensitive cavity optomechanical magnetometry Download: 726次
1. INTRODUCTION
The resonant enhancement of both optical and mechanical response in a cavity optomechanical system [1,2] has enabled precision sensors [3] of displacement [4,5], force [6], mass [7], acceleration [8,9], ultrasound [10], and magnetic fields [11
This paper focuses on optimizing the sensitivity of magnetostrictive optomechanical magnetometers. We find that the sensitivity depends critically on the shape of the support that suspends the magnetometer above the silicon chip. This support both constrains the magnetostriction-induced mechanical motion and provides an avenue for thermal fluctuations to enter the system. By engineering its structure to increase both its compliance and the mechanical quality factor of the device, we demonstrate around an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity compared to previous works, to . This is comparable to the similarly sized cryogenic magnetometers [2123" target="_self" style="display: inline;">–
The magnetic response as a function of magnetic field frequency is found to show two significantly different behaviors: a relatively smooth response modulated by the mechanical resonances of the structure and a response that exhibits dramatic variations as a function of frequency, with these variations occurring under the envelope of the mechanical resonances. We refer to these two behaviors as Type I and Type II, respectively. The magnetic response of the Type II devices is observed to be highly sensitive to direct current (DC) magnetic fields. We find this behavior is consistent with interference of acoustic waves produced at multiple grain boundaries in a polycrystalline Terfenol-D particle. We therefore infer that the Type I and II responses arise when the particle is mono- and polycrystalline, respectively. Our devices, therefore, provide a method to characterize the Terfenol-D crystal structure, a measurement which is generally challenging at the level of a single grain.
The magnetometers show an ultrabroadband response. The working frequency ranges for both Type I and Type II magnetometers are more than 130 MHz, limited by the bandwidth of the photoreceivers we use in our experiment. Accumulated 3 dB bandwidths [15] of 11.3 MHz and 120 kHz are measured for the Type I and Type II magnetometers, respectively. This compares favorably to other sensitive optical readout magnetometers, which typically have bandwidths in the 1–10 kHz range [24–
2. EXPERIMENT AND RESULT
2.1 A. Fabrication
The magnetometers are fabricated by depositing Terfenol-D particles into holes etched into the center of silica microtoroids, following the approach in Ref. [12], as shown in Figs.
Fig. 1. (a)–(c) Optical microscope images showing the Terfenol-D deposition process. (d) and (e) The SEM images of a microtoroid before and after the Terfenol-D deposition. The scale bar in (d) is 40 μm. (f) A schematic of the side view of a magnetometer, with a principal radius of , minor diameter of , and a pedestal width of . (g)–(i) Top view optical microscope images of a fabricated magnetometer, with gradually decreased pedestal width, marked in the area between the two white dotted circles.
2.2 B. Measurement of Magnetic Field Sensitivity
To measure the magnetic field sensitivity of the fabricated magnetometers, we use a tapered fiber [29] to couple light from a tunable laser in the 1550 nm wavelength band into one of their whispering gallery modes (WGMs). We then use a photoreceiver to detect the light transmitted from the microtoroids back into the tapered optical fiber. After we identify a high- WGM, we thermally lock the laser frequency on the blue side of the mode [30]. Mechanical motion due to the applied magnetic field modulates the perimeter of the device and therefore changes the optical resonance. This translates into a periodical modulation in the transmitted light intensity. We use a spectrum analyzer (SA) to measure the noise power spectrum. We then apply a magnetic field to the magnetometer using a coil driven by a network analyzer. This allows the frequency of the magnetic field applied to the magnetometer to be swept and the magnetic response at each frequency to be characterized. With the noise power spectra and system response, we derive the magnetic field sensitivity, following Ref. [11].
2.3 C. Sensitivity Improvement by Silicon Pedestal Etching
In our experiment, to achieve a uniform laser reflow process, the silicon pedestal is left with a width of after the etching. Here, in order to improve the mechanical compliance and thus improve the magnetic field sensitivity, we then further etch down the silicon pedestal by performing several runs of etching after the Terfenol-D deposition process is complete. The width of the pedestal can be directly measured from an optical microscope image, and is marked in the area between the two white dashed circles in Fig.
We etch down the silicon pedestal by a few microns in each run of etching, and measure the sensitivity. In Figs.
Fig. 2. Magnetic field sensitivity improvement by etching down the width of the silicon pedestal. (a) and (b) The noise power spectra and sensitivity spectra for a magnetometer with pedestal width of 4.5 μm (red curve) and 0.5 μm (black curve). (c) The peak sensitivity frequency and (d) peak sensitivity of the magnetometer, as a function of the pedestal width.
2.4 D. Peak Sensitivity
In Fig.
Fig. 3. Measurement results for the two types of magnetometers. (a)–(c) The noise power spectrum, system response, and sensitivity spectrum for a Type I magnetometer. The inset of (c) shows the profile of the radial breathing mode (where the peak sensitivity occurs) of the magnetometer, obtained through finite element method simulation using COMSOL Multiphysics. (d)–(f) The corresponding results for a Type II magnetometer. The peak sensitivities are and for the Type I magnetometer and the Type II magnetometer, respectively.
The peak sensitivity found for Type I magnetometers is at about 30 MHz. This frequency corresponds to the radial breathing mode of the magnetometer, with its mode profile shown in the inset of Fig.
Fig. 4. Zoom-in on (a) the system response and (b) the sensitivity spectrum of the Type II magnetometer around its peak sensitivity frequency. The peak sensitivity is around .
2.5 E. Magnetic Response
In order to study the two types of magnetic response, we fabricated a total of 26 magnetometers. Of them, we found that 18 exhibited Type I magnetic response, and eight showed Type II magnetic response. In Fig.
Fig. 5. Measured peak sensitivities of 26 magnetometers, eighteen of which show Type I magnetic response (red squares) and eight show Type II magnetic response (blue circles).
All of the measured magnetometers were fabricated using the same method. The fact that magnetic domains in Terfenol-D can have a size similar to size of the grains [3133" target="_self" style="display: inline;">–
Fig. 6. (a) and (b) Measured amplitude and phase of the magnetic response in the frequency range between 32 MHz and 37 MHz, for a Type II magnetometer (No. 26 in Fig. 5 ). (c) and (d) Theoretically generated amplitude and phase of the system response obtained from the interference of multiple waves from different sources with different amplitudes and phases.
This strong dependence of the magnetic response on the applied DC field observed in Type II magnetometers can be explained by interference between the magnetostrictive waves generated at each crystal grain, with destructive interference responsible for the observed anti-resonance-like dips in the response. To explore this interference effect, we use a simple multiwave interference model to simulate the process. Figures
2.6 F. Bandwidth
We finally discuss the bandwidths of the magnetometers. Due to the fact that the microtoroids support various mechanical modes in a large frequency range from hundreds of kHz to hundreds of MHz, the magnetometers can detect magnetic fields over a broad bandwidth. As can be seen in Figs.
Fig. 7. Accumulated bandwidth as a function of the threshold sensitivity for the Type I (black curve, device No. 25 in Fig. 5 ) and the Type II (red curve, device No. 9 in Fig. 5 ) magnetometers in Fig. 3 . The 3 dB bandwidths for the Type I and Type II magnetometers are 11.3 MHz and 120 kHz, respectively. In the inset, it shows the definition of the accumulated bandwidth to be the total frequency range in the shaded area.
3. CONCLUSION
In summary, we have achieved an on-chip, room-temperature magnetometer, with a peak sensitivity of . This is state of the art for micro-optomechanical magnetometers and is comparable to microscale SQUIDs. We have also found that our magnetometers exhibit two qualitatively different classes of magnetic response. The Type I magnetometers show a relatively smooth magnetic response as a function of the frequency, following the mechanical resonances of the device; while the magnetic response of the Type II magnetometers varies significantly over frequency ranges of 10 kHz, within the envelope of the mechanical resonances. We postulate that magnetometers with single crystalline Terfenol-D particles show a Type I magnetic response, and those with polycrystalline Terfenol-D particles show a Type II magnetic response, and that the dips in the magnetic response spectra of the Type II magnetometers arise due to the destructive interference of the magnetostrictive response from different crystal grains. Finally we show that the optomechanical magnetometers can have an ultrabroad accumulated bandwidth. The working bandwidth exceeds 130 MHz for both the Type I and Type II magnetometers. The 3 dB bandwidth where the sensitivity is within a factor of 2 of the peak sensitivity is found to be for a Type I magnetometer, and for a Type II magnetometer, respectively, considerably larger than that of other sensitive room-temperature magnetometers. The high sensitivity and broad bandwidth open up new possibilities for applications such as on-chip microfluidic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
4 Acknowledgment
Acknowledgment. We thank James Bennett, Varun Prakash, Guangheng Wu, and Enke Liu for the very helpful discussions. This work was primarily funded by DARPA QuASAR Program, Australian Research Council, Australian Defence Science and Technology Group, and Commonwealth of Australia as represented by the Defence Science and Technology Group of the Department of Defence. W. P. B. acknowledges an Australian Research Future Fellowship. B. B. L. acknowledges a University of Queensland Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Device fabrication was performed within the Queensland Node of the Australian Nanofabrication Facility.
Article Outline
Bei-Bei Li, George Brawley, Hamish Greenall, Stefan Forstner, Eoin Sheridan, Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop, Warwick P. Bowen. Ultrabroadband and sensitive cavity optomechanical magnetometry[J]. Photonics Research, 2020, 8(7): 07001064.