Broadband Compact Single-Pole Double-Throw Silicon Photonic MEMS Switch

Abstract

Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) benefit from the technology advances in the semiconductor industry to incorporate an ever-increasing number of photonic components on a single chip to create large-scale photonic integrated circuits. We here present a broadband, compact and low-loss Silicon Photonic MEMS switch based on a Single-Pole Double-Throw (SPDT) architecture, where curved electrostatic actuators mechanically displace a movable input waveguide to redirect the optical signal on chip efficiently to either of two output waveguides. The photonic switch has been fabricated in an established silicon photonics technology platform with custom MEMS release postprocessing. With a compact footprint of 65 × 62 µm 2 , the switch exhibits an extinction ratio exceeding 23 dB over 70 nm optical bandwidth, a low insertion loss and a fast response time below 1 µs, meeting the requirements for integration in large-scale reconfigurable Photonic Integrated Circuits. [2020-0391] Index Terms-Microelectromechanical systems, photonic integrated circuits, silicon photonics, photonics, optical switch. I. INTRODUCTION T HE field of Electronic Integrated Circuits (ICs) has experienced a remarkable development throughout the past decades, which has led to circuits with billions of switching transistors on a single chip, underpinning much of modern day computing. Equivalently, the field of Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) has recently seen tremendous progress in integration, whereby tens of thousands of optical components can be operated on a single chip. Among the enabling components Manuscript

Programmable silicon photonic circuits powered by MEMS

“…Silicon photonic MEMS are, by themselves, not a new proposition. There have been numerous demonstrations of electrostatically actuated waveguide devices for use in phase shifters, 14,[16][17][18][19] tunable couplers 20 switches, [21][22][23][24] tunable filters 25 or tunable grating couplers. 26 Most of these demonstrations have in common that they are implemented in a specialized silicon photonics platform, incompatible with existing silicon photonics devices.…”

“…4. 24 This device physically switches the optical connectivity between a single input waveguide and two output waveguides by moving the tip of the input to the matching tip of the output. The device can be made very compact by optimizing the shape of the electrodes that perform the electrostatic attraction.…”

A Bistable Silicon Photonic Mems Phase Switch For Nonvolatile Photonic Circuits

“…The final cross-section is shown as an inset in Figure 3. For more details on the postprocessing steps, we refer readers to a previously published waveguide switch on the same platform [7].…”

Compact Integrated Silicon Photonic MEMS Power Coupler For Programmable Photonics

“…Process development has been performed at coupon-and chipscale, but all steps are wafer-scale compatible. A short summary of the main steps is provided here and illustrated in Figure 3; for a more complete discussion, please see [10].…”