A thermally tunable GaAlAs-GaAs micromachined optical filter with submillisecond tuning speed

Author

Amano, Tetsuo ; Hino, T. ; Koyama, F. ; Arai, M. ; Matsutani, Akihiro

Author_Institution

Microsystem Res. Center, Tokyo Inst. of Technol., Yokohama, Japan

Volume

16

Issue

6

fYear

2004

fDate

6/1/2004 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1501

Lastpage

1503

Abstract

We fabricated a GaAlAs-GaAs thermally tunable vertical-cavity filter with a thermal strain control layer and heating element on a micromachined cantilever structure. We achieved a large negative temperature dependence of -0.79 nm/K for the vertical-cavity filter by loading a GaAs strain control layer. The tuning voltage is as low as 4.9 V for wavelength tuning of 18.1 nm. We examined the dynamic response of the thermally tunable micromachined GaAlAs-GaAs filter, exhibiting both rise time and fall time of below 100 μs.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; gallium compounds; micro-optics; micromachining; micromechanical devices; optical communication equipment; optical fabrication; optical filters; optical tuning; semiconductor devices; thermo-optical devices; 4.9 V; GaAlAs-GaAs; GaAlAs-GaAs thermally tunable vertical-cavity filter; GaAs; GaAs strain control layer; heating element; microelectromechanical system; micromachined cantilever structure; negative temperature dependence; submillisecond tuning; thermal strain control layer; thermally tunable GaAlAs-GaAs micromachined optical filter; tunable filters; tuning voltage; wavelength tuning; Distributed Bragg reflectors; Gallium arsenide; Heating; Laser tuning; Optical filters; Optical tuning; Strain control; Temperature dependence; Thermal force; Tunable circuits and devices;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2004.827110

Filename

1300645