Phonons in slow motion: dispersion relations in ultrathin Si membranes.

Cuffe, John; Chávez, Emigdio; Shchepetov, Andrey; Chapuis, Pierre-Olivier; El Boudouti, El Houssaine; Alzina, Francesc; Kehoe, Timothy; Gomis-Bresco, Jordi et al. · Nano Lett · 2012

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We report the changes in dispersion relations of hypersonic acoustic phonons in free-standing silicon membranes as thin as ∼8 nm. We observe a reduction of the phase and group velocities of the fundamental flexural mode by more than 1 order of magnitude compared to bulk values. The modification of the dispersion relation in nanostructures has important consequences for noise control in nano- and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS) as well as opto-mechanical devices.