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Internal friction measurements of ion beam sputtered amorphous silica

Thomas H. Metcalf*, Xiao Liu†, and Matthew Abernathy‡

Raymond Robie

Massimo Granata, Lorenzo Mereni, Christophe Michel, and Julien Teillon

Gianpietro Gagnoli

  • *Contact author: thomas.h.metcalf.civ@us.navy.mil
  • †Retired.
  • ‡Present address: The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland 20723, USA.
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Phys. Rev. Materials 10, 085602 – Published 24 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/hsgl-xhng

Abstract

The ability to minimize low-temperature acoustic loss in amorphous materials would have implications in fields as wide-ranging as gravitational wave detection and quantum computing. In this paper, we measure the internal friction between 300mK and room temperature of several thin silica films deposited by ion beam sputtering onto ultra-high-Q silicon resonators. The measurements reveal internal configurations of as-deposited films that are markedly different from that of bulk silica. Over a broad temperature range, the films' internal frictions differ from one another by a factor of two; by contrast, a review shows that sub-MHz internal friction measurements of bulk silica fall within a 35% band with a pronounced main absorption peak between 20K and 40K. This peak is absent in the films presented here, except for one film that had been annealed at 900∘C. Annealing at 500∘C erased the thermal histories of the other thin films to create internal friction values that are consistent from film-to-film but yet still markedly different from those of the bulk below 100K, while creating the steep bulk-like drop-off above 100K that the as-deposited films lacked. In the context of theoretical structural modeling, our results suggest that exposure to temperatures of at least 900∘C is needed to form the network of tetrahedra considered characteristic of amorphous silica. The present measurements, especially when compared alongside previous work, appear to show that these structures are suppressed in many thin film preparations. These measurements also show, for as-deposited films, an excess of excitations in the 0.15–0.3eV range which can be annealed away to bring about the Q−1 drop-off above the main absorption peak. The shear moduli of all the films are qualitatively similar to bulk silica, with a positive temperature coefficient above a minimum near 60K and a negative temperature coefficient below.

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Phys. Rev. Materials 10, 085602– Published 24 August, 2026
  • Received 13 March 2026
  • Accepted 15 July 2026
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