Micromachined vertical cavities and hollow optical waveguides for widely tunable devices

Abstract

We present the design and fabrication of micromachined vertical cavity filters with stress control, which give us novel functions including temperature insensitive operation, thermal wavelength tuning, wavelength trimming and 2-D multi-wavelength integration. The temperature dependence could be freely controlled either for temperature insensitive operations or for widely wavelength tuning.In addition, we propose the use of a hollow waveguide in which light can be confined in air for realizing temperature-insensitive waveguide devices. We present various unique features in hollow waveguides and the combination with microelectro-mechanical system (MEMS) gives us novel widely tunable waveguide devices.