A fully planar two-dimensional optomechanical crystal formed in a silicon microchip is used to create a structure devoid of phonons in the GHz frequency range. A nanoscale photonic crystal cavity is placed inside the phononic bandgap crystal in order to probe the properties of the localized acoustic modes. By studying the trends in mechanical damping, mode density, and optomechanical coupling strength of the acoustic resonances over an array of structures with varying geometric properties, clear evidence of a complete phononic bandgap is shown.
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