Strong opto-electro-mechanical coupling in a silicon photonic crystal cavity

We fabricate and characterize a microscale silicon opto-electro-mechanical system whose mechanical motion is coupled capacitively to an electrical circuit and optically via radiation pressure to a photonic crystal cavity. To achieve large electromechanical interaction strength, we implement an inverse shadow mask fabrication scheme which obtains capacitor gaps as small as 30 nm while maintaining a silicon surface quality necessary for minimizing optical loss. Using the sensitive optical read-out of the photonic crystal cavity, we characterize the linear and nonlinear capacitive coupling to the fundamental omega(m)/2 pi - 63 MHz in-plane flexural motion of the structure, showing that the large electromechanical coupling in such devices may be suitable for realizing efficient microwave-to-optical signal conversion. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America