Light-to-Sound Conversion in Silicon Nanodrums

Interaction of photons with phonons has been studied in the fields of cavity optomechanics and Brillouin scattering, with promising applications in coherent light storage, frequency conversion, optomechanical sensors, narrow-linewidth lasers, electro-optic transducers, and microwave photonics [1]. Recently, hypersound generation in extremely-high-frequency range (>1 GHz) with a single gold plasmonic nanoantenna has been demonstrated [2], as well as a proof-of-concept nanoscale measurement of the viscoelastic properties of polymers [3].