We demonstrate a sandwich configuration for microfluidic manipulation in LiNbO3 platform based on photovoltaic effect, and the behaviours of dielectric microdroplet under this sandwich configuration are investigated. It is found that the microdroplet can generate in the form of liquid bridge inside the LiNbO3-based sandwich structure under the governing dielectrophoretic force, and the dynamic process of microdroplet generation highly depends on the substrate combinations. Dynamic features found for different combinations are explained by the different electrostatic field distribution basing on the finite-element simulation results. Moreover, the electrostatic field required by the microdroplet generation is estimated through meniscus evolution and it is found in good agreement with the simulated electrostatic field inside the sandwich gap. Several kinds of microdroplet manipulations are attempted in this work. We suggest that the local dielectrophoretic force acting on the microdroplet depends on the distribution of the accumulated irradiation dosage. Without using any additional pumping or jetting actuator, the microdroplet can be step-moved, deformed or patterned by the inconsecutive dot-irradiation scheme, as well as elastically stretched out and back or smoothly guided in a designed pass by the consecutive line-irradiation scheme.

A novel optical frequency-hopping scheme based on a flexible structure for secure optical communications is proposed and demonstrated. In the proposed scheme, critical users' data are divided into a lot of segments, and these segments are transmitted by different optical wavelengths in time domain. In other words, one channel optical carrier carries different users' data segments. A flexible structure was demonstrated and used in optical frequency-hopping system to simplify the structure and decrease the cost of the security system. In this paper, the viability of a four-wavelength-frequency-hopping secure optical communication system with a 25-Gb/s error-free transmission through a 32-km single-mode fiber and a 8-km dispersion compensation fiber was demonstrated and verified by simulation tools.

A novel optical frequency-hopping system based on distributed feedback laser integrated with an electroabsorption modulator is proposed and demonstrated. In the proposed system, a user's data are split into segments and modulated onto multiple optical frequency shift keying carries, therefore, a single wavelength of optical carrier only carries partial user's data. By this way, the security of optical communication system is improved. In this paper, we demonstrate an error free transmission through 32-km single mode fiber and 8-km dispersion compensation fiber with 2.5 Gb/s hopping rate and 10 Gb/s data rate. Meanwhile, we also compare and analyze the performance of the proposed system with different hopping rate and data rate.