Silicon photonic microelectromechanical switch using lateral adiabatic waveguide couplers

A silicon photonic waveguide switch using adiabatic couplers with lateral combdrive actuators is designed. fabricated. and tested for inicroelectromechanical optical matrix switch. One of the waveguides of the adiabatic coupler is moved laterally by three actuators for varying the coupler gap, which enables to switch the path of the waveguides. The coupler waveguides with 250 nm thickness consist of a movable tapered waveguide from 400 nm to 500 nm in width and 50 mu m in length and a straight waveguide of 400 nm in width. The three actuators are ultra-small electrostatic comb-drive and move the two movable tapered waveguides. The switch's transmission characteristics were measured as a function of the coupler gap. Around a coupler gap of 109 nm, the port isolation of 16.7 dB was obtained. The switch's insertion loss was roughly estimated to be less than 1 dB. The switching time was 36.7 mu sec under the present experimental condition. Moreover, 64 switches were arrayed in a 125 mu m period square mash waveguide and an 8 x 8 matrix switch was composed. The matrix switch was also tested. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement