A micromachined optical delay line by switchable metamaterials

Author

Zhu, W.M. ; Tao, J.F. ; Teng, J.H. ; Zhang, X.H. ; Tanoto, H. ; Guo, H.C. ; Wu, Q.Y. ; Bourouina, T. ; Liu, A.Q.

Author_Institution

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

fYear

2011

fDate

5-9 June 2011

Firstpage

2670

Lastpage

2673

Abstract

This paper presents a MEMS switchable optical delay line, which works at terahertz (THz) region. The geometry of the unit cell is tunable by MEMS actuators. In the experiment, it measures that the round trip time of the 5-μm silicon-metal cavity with the metamaterial slab is delayed by a factor of 100 when the gap of the metamaterial unit cell is shifted from 4 μm to 8 μm. Compared with the traditional tunable optical delay line, the metamaterial optical delay line has merits of fine tuning resolution, high tuning speed and feasible for high density integration.

Keywords

elemental semiconductors; metamaterials; micro-optics; microactuators; micromachining; microswitches; optical delay lines; optical switches; silicon; time measurement; MEMS actuator; MEMS switchable optical delay line; Si; fine tuning resolution; high density integration; metamaterial optical delay line; metamaterial slab; metamaterial unit cell geometry; micromachined optical delay line; round trip time measurement; silicon-metal cavity; size 4 mum to 8 mum; switchable metamaterial; Delay lines; Magnetic materials; Metamaterials; Optical refraction; Optical sensors; Optical switches; Optical variables control; Micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS); Switchable metamaterials; optical delay line;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference (TRANSDUCERS), 2011 16th International

Conference_Location

Beijing

ISSN

Pending

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0157-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/TRANSDUCERS.2011.5969712

Filename

5969712