Nanomechanical and Optomechanical Coupling in Silicon Carbide / Hexagonal Boron Nitride Hybrid Resonator

This digest paper reports on the demonstration of a hybrid system consisting of a silicon carbide (SiC) microdisk cavity and a hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) nanomechanical resonator. Strong mechanical coupling between the constituents is revealed in both optical interferometry measurements and finite element method (FEM) simulations, even with the thickness of h-BN scaled down to a few atomic layers. Numerical computations assess that the hybrid device will lead to an improvement of vacuum coupling rate by 454 Hz (∼47%) at the h-BN thickness of 36 nm, compared to the bare SiC microdisk. Understanding of the nanomechanical properties facilitates design and implementation of SiC/h-BN hybrid systems and opens a new door to coherent transduction between optics and mechanics on this platform.