Silicon Microtoroidal Resonators With Integrated MEMS Tunable Coupler

Single and multiple optical switches that use freestanding silicon nanowire waveguide couplers

“…7 Due to the very low power consumption associated with capacitive operation, this technology suits the large-scale integration and reduced energy consumption requirements of telecommunication systems. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Among these waveguide circuits, coupler switches have attracted interest due to the use of non-contact low-loss mechanisms.13,15 A coupler switch using InP waveguides was operated by applying electrostatic forces between the freestanding waveguides. 13 In the case of a parallel-electrode actuator, a coupler gap smaller than two-thirds of the initial gap is not consistently controllable due to force instability.…”

Ultralow threshold laser action from toroidal polymer microcavity

“…Microcavities with ultrahigh quality factors have been extensively studied in recent years including the subject of laser action, 1,2 nonlinear optics, 3,4 photonics, 5 quantum information, 6 optomechanics, 7 telecommunications, 8 high resolution spectroscopy, 9 chemical sensing, 10 and cavity quantum electrodynamics. 11 In most of the studies mentioned, microresonators confine light in the form of whispering gallery modes due to very high efficiency of total internal reflection mechanism.…”

“…12 It is not usually possible to obtain such smooth surfaces by employing only lithographic methods and the fabrication of ultrahigh quality factor microcavities necessitates a reflow step where surface tension of the melted structure redefines the shape of resonator. Until now, silica fibers 2 and microdisks of silica and silicon 8,13 have been reflowed to generate microspheres and microtoroids, respectively. Microtoroids are usually more advantageous because they can be produced on chip with high quality factors 4,13 and they can also be engineered to have smaller mode volume, 14 which is crucial for nonlinear applications.…”

A Thermally Wavelength-tunable Photonic Switch Based on Silicon Microring Resonator

“…Wavelength tuning for integrated photonic filters can be realized through several mechanisms, such as thermooptic induced index change [37,38,[69][70][71][72], electrooptic effect [73,74], carrier induced index changes [3,20,75], and dielectric perturbation by MEMS [26]. [68,72].…”

“…The inner circulation factor (α) can be tuned by electro-absorption [12], gain trimming [13], and metal absorption [14]. The tuning of power coupling coefficients (κ 2 ) are usually applied in optical bandwidth tuning [24] by using Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) [25], micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) [26][27][28][29] and micro-fluidic approaches [30]. Wavelength tuning is usually done through changing group index (n g ) by thermooptic effect [15][16][17], electro-optical effect [18], and carrier injection [19].…”