Abstract
With extremely low material absorption and exceptional surface smoothness, silica-based optical resonators can achieve extremely high cavity quality (
Q
) factors. However, the intrinsic material limitations of silica (e.g., lack of second order nonlinearity) may limit the potential applications of silica-based high
Q
resonators. Here we report some results in utilizing layer-by-layer self-assembly to functionalize silica microspheres with nonlinear and plasmonic nanomaterials while maintaining
Q
factors as high as 10
7
. We compare experimentally measured
Q
factors with theoretical estimates, and find good agreement.