Integrated micro-optical interferometer arrays

Surface micromachining is an emerging technology that has rapidly found its applications in optoelectronics and micro-optics. Micromachining technology will become even more attractive to optical applications if micromechanical devices can be treated as readily available add-on structures to photonic devices such as lasers, detectors, and modulators for new functionalities. Recently, we have developed a low temperature, low stress surface micromachining process that has such features. Using this technology, we fabricated micromachined Fabry-Perot tunable filters and integrated them with various optical devices operating at 1.3/1.55 micron wavelength regimes.