Manufacturing fused silica hemispherical resonators using polymer glass suspension and replication molding

Abstract

This work introduces a new method for manufacturing fused silica (FS)-based hemispherical resonators (HSRs) using a printable polymer glass mixture and replication molding. This process involves 3D printing to create the mold, followed by the casting of a photo-reactive pre-polymer glass mixture. This technique allows us to produce complex 3D geometries and offers faster production of resonators compared to other traditional methods. In this study, we manufactured three devices and successfully identified resonance modes with two (N = 2), three (N = 3) and four (N = 4) nodes/antinodes in all three HSRs, demonstrating the repeatability of our new manufacturing method. The highest quality factor of 482 k was achieved for the N = 3 resonance mode using the ring-down method. Some of the key advantages of our method include producing multiple devices efficiently with relatively good surface quality, making it a viable option for producing high-precision devices in the future. Our new fabrication technique results in a device surface roughness of ∼100 nm (measured over an area of 250 μm × 250 μm) and manufacturing yield of over 90%. Moreover, all the steps involved in this method can be completed outside of a specialized cleanroom environment.