Flexible waveguide integrated thermo-optic switch based on TiO2 platform

Mechanically flexible photonic devices are critical compo-nents of novel bio-integrated optoelectronic and high-end wearable systems, in which thermo-optic switches (TOSs) as optical signal control devices are crucial. In this paper, flex-ible titanium oxide (TiO2) TOSs based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) structure were demonstrated around 1310 nm for, it is believed, the first time. The insertion loss of flexible passive TiO2 2 x 2 multi-mode interferometers (MMIs) is -3.1 dB per MMI. The demonstrated flexible TOS achieves power consumption (P & pi;) of 0.83 mW, com-pared with its rigid counterpart, for which P & pi; is decreased by a factor of 18. The proposed device could withstand 100 consecutive bending operations without noticeable degrada-tion in TOS performance, indicating excellent mechanical stability. These results provide a new perspective for design-ing and fabricating flexible TOSs for flexible optoelectronic systems in future emerging applications. & COPY; 2023 Optica Pub-lishing Group