Vacuum-sealed silicon photonic MEMS tunable ring resonator with an independent control over coupling and phase
Ring resonators are a vital element for filters, optical delay lines, or sensors in silicon photonics. However, reconfigurable ring resonators with low-power consumption are not available in foundries today. We demonstrate an add-drop ring resonator with the independent tuning of round-trip phase and coupling using low-power microelectromechanical (MEMS) actuation. At a wavelength of 1540 nm and for a maximum voltage of 40 V, the phase shifters provide a resonance wavelength tuning of 0.15 nm, while the tunable couplers can tune the optical resonance extinction ratio at the through port from 0 to 30 dB. The optical resonance displays a passive quality factor of 29 000, which can be increased to almost 50 000 with actuation. The MEMS rings are individually vacuum-sealed on wafer scale, enabling reliable and long-term protection from the environment. We cycled the mechanical actuators for more than 4 x 109 cycles at 100 kHz, and did not observe degradation in their response curves. On mechanical resonance, we demonstrate a modulation increase of up to 15 dB, with a voltage bias of 4 V and a peak drive amplitude as low as 20 mV.(c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement
Cite this item
Edinger, P., Jo, G., Nguyen, C. P. V., Takabayashi, A. Y., Errando-Herranz, C., Antony, C., Talli, G., Verheyen, P., Khan, U., Bleiker, S. J., Bogaerts, W., Quack, N., Niklaus, F., & Gylfason, K. B. (2023). Vacuum-sealed silicon photonic MEMS tunable ring resonator with an independent control over coupling and phase. Optics Express, 31(4), 6540–6551. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.480219
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WOS:000942062500006
2023-02-13
31
4
6540
6551
REVIEWED
EPFL