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Large-scale photonic switches are essential devices for energy-and cost-efficient optical communication networks in cloud and data-intensive computing. Silicon photonics is an attractive platform for high-density photonic integrated circuits with low manufacturing costs through the leveraging of existing advanced complementary metal-oxidesemiconductor processes. Many optical components such as lasers, modulators, splitters, and photodetectors have been successfully integrated on silicon; however, the quest for large-scale silicon photonic switches has remained elusive. Previous silicon photonic switches made of cascaded 1 × 2 or 2 × 2 building blocks have a limited port count (≤8 × 8) or excessive optical losses (>15 dB). Here, we present a 64 × 64 digital silicon photonic switch with a low on-chip insertion loss (3.7 dB) and broadband operation (300 nm). The measured switching time is 0.91 μs, and the extinction ratio is larger than 60 dB. The matrix switch with 4096 microelectromechanical-systems-actuated vertical adiabatic couplers has been integrated on a 8.6 mm × 8.6 mm chip. To our knowledge this is the largest monolithic switch, and the largest silicon photonic integrated circuit, reported to date. The passive matrix architecture of our switch is fundamentally more scalable than that of multistage switches.

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We describe the design, fabrication, and operation of several micro-motors that have been produced using integrated-circuit processing [3). Both rotors and stators for these motors, which are driven by electrostatic forces, are formed from 1.0-1.5 µm-thick polycrystalline silicon. The diameters of the rotors in the motors we have tested are between 60 and 120 µm. Motors with several friction-reducing designs have been fabricated using phosphosilicate glass (PSG) as a sacrificial material [ 4,5) and either one, or three polysilicon depositions. INTRODt:CTION Recent publications have discussed possible designs for micro-motors [1,2) based on electrostatic-drive principles. Using technology derived from IC manufacturing processes, we have built and tested several electrostatically driven rotating motors and driven them both in stepwise fashion and through continuous revolutions. Included among the motors are structures with 4 and 8 rotor poles and 6, 12, and 24 stator poles. Typical gaps between the rotors and stators in this first realization of operating micromotors are 2 µm or greater. The technology for the motors, which have rotors that tum on stationary axles fixed to the silicon substrate, is based upon the processes described in [ 4, 5).