Widely tunable external cavity diode laser using a MEMS electrostatic rotary actuator

The deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) MEMS actuators have enabled a small form factor, low cost tunable laser source ideal for many DWDM applications. External cavity diode lasers using rotary electrostatic MEMS actuators achieve 10-dBm outputs over the C band with 40-nm continuous tuning and 15-ms locking to 50-GHz ITU channels. The performance of the MEM-ECDL meets telecommunications requirements for optical power, side mode suppression, polarization extinction ratio, relative intensity noise, and linewidth. The required wavelength accuracy of 2.5 GHz has been demonstrated using simple closed loop control of the MEMS actuator voltage. The laser can be packaged in a compact 14-pin butterfly package.