Roughness effects on phononic structures

Phononic structures—whether crystals or pseudocrystals—are inevitably manufactured with finite tolerances, which limit their performance. We compare the modeled and measured transmission results for 3-D phononic isolation structures with finite roughness (from manufacturing in the measured case and simulated roughness based on surface scans of the phononic structures in the calculated case) to determine the degree to which surface roughness can explain measured deviations from the design performance of phononic structures. [SNL is managed and operated by NTESS under DOE NNSA contract DE-NA0003525.]