Fabrication and analysis of printable fused-silica based double paddle oscillators

This paper describes a new manufacturing method for producing a double paddle oscillator geometry using a printable fused silica glass suspension. The method includes casting a printable glass mixture into a polymer mold, followed by multiple thermal processing steps. This process results in the production of clear and high-quality fused silica devices. Our approach for fabricating fused silica devices is easy to use, extremely robust, needs fewer manufacturing stages, and enables batch fabrication of multiple devices. In this work, we investigate the quality factor and first two resonance modes of fused silica based double paddle oscillators (DPOs) with varying thicknesses using computational and experimental techniques. We can experimentally detect two resonance modes, including cantilever and standard torsion modes for 0.5 mm, 0.8 mm, and 1 mm thick DPOs, with thicker devices providing a higher quality factor. Additionally, our optimized fabrication method ensures a device yield of over 90 %. All fabrication steps used in our method can be accomplished outside of a cleanroom facility.