A NEMS optical switch driven by optical force

Author

Tao, J.F. ; Cai, H. ; Yu, A.B. ; Zhang, Q.X. ; Wu, J. ; Xu, K. ; Lin, J.T. ; Lo, G.Q. ; Kwong, D.L. ; Liu, A.Q.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Nanyang Technol. Univ., Singapore, Singapore

fYear

2011

fDate

5-9 June 2011

Firstpage

1753

Lastpage

1756

Abstract

In this paper, an optical switch driven by the optical force is demonstrated based on Nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) technology. The switch consists of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and a ring resonator. One of the MZI arms is suspended to enable optical switching by optical force induced displacement. The optical force is introduced by injecting a control light into the ring resonator. It has a switching contrast of 16 dB and a response time of 0.2 μs, which is 10³ times faster than the traditional millimeter-scaled optical switches. It has potential applications in the high speed optical-packet-switching communications and the silicon-photonic integrated circuits.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; nanoelectromechanical devices; optical resonators; optical switches; MZI; Mach-Zehnder interferometer; NEMS optical switch; control light injection; millimeter-scaled optical switch; nanoelectromechanical optical switch; optical force; optical-packet-switching communication; ring resonator; silicon-photonic integrated circuit; switching contrast; time 0.2 mus; Force; High speed optical techniques; Optical ring resonators; Optical sensors; Optical surface waves; Optical switches; Optical waveguides; NEMS; optical force; optical switch; ring resonator;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference (TRANSDUCERS), 2011 16th International

Conference_Location

Beijing

ISSN

Pending

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0157-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/TRANSDUCERS.2011.5969798

Filename

5969798