MEMS Littman tunable laser using curve-shaped blazed grating

Author

Zhang, X.M. ; Cai, H. ; Liu, A.Q. ; Hao, J.Z. ; Tang, D.Y. ; Lu, C.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Nanyang Technol. Univ., Singapore

Volume

1

fYear

2005

Firstpage

804

Abstract

The paper reports a MEMS Littman tunable laser with a new design, which makes use of a non-standard blazed grating to collimate and diffract the laser beam simultaneously. It exploits the advantages of MEMS fabrication to pattern the non-standard grating while avoiding the need for low-quality MEMS lenses. In addition, this design has high tolerance for misalignment. The MEMS structure is etched on a SOI wafer (structure layer 60 μm thick) and is then integrated with the laser chip and optical fibers. Linear wavelength tuning is measured over a range of 9.2 nm.

Keywords

diffraction gratings; integrated optoelectronics; micromachining; micromechanical devices; optical fabrication; semiconductor lasers; silicon-on-insulator; 60 micron; MEMS Littman tunable laser; MEMS fabrication; MEMS lenses; SOI wafer; collimation; curve-shaped blazed grating; diffraction; laser chip; laser diode; linear wavelength tuning range; nonstandard grating patterning; optical fibers; Collimators; Diffraction gratings; Etching; Laser beams; Laser tuning; Lenses; Micromechanical devices; Optical design; Optical device fabrication; Tunable circuits and devices;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems, 2005. Digest of Technical Papers. TRANSDUCERS '05. The 13th International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8994-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SENSOR.2005.1496539

Filename

1496539