Broadband monolithic superlattice acousto-optic tunable filter

Bulk acousto-optic tunable filters (AOTFs) consist of a transmission medium in which the acousto-optic interaction takes place, with an acoustic transducer bonded to it and lapped down to a thickness determined by the operating acoustic frequency range. These devices require laborious and costly fabrication processes such as crystal orientation and transducer bonding followed by lapping and polishing, and several different materials are necessary in construction. These various drawbacks are overcome by the design discussed here, where the transducer and the transmission medium are formed from a contiguous piece of LiNbO₃ cut from a commercially obtainable wafer