Widely tunable torsional optical filter

Author

Mateus, Carols F R ; Chang, Chih-Hao ; Chrostowski, Lukas ; Yang, Steven ; Sun, Decai ; Pathak, Rajiv ; Chang-Hasnain, Connie J.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Berkeley, CA, USA

Volume

14

Issue

6

fYear

2002

fDate

6/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

819

Lastpage

821

Abstract

A broad range tunable optical filter using a torsional micromechanical structure is presented. The device has a continuous tuning range over 100 nm, from 1500 to 1600 nm, and the structure eliminates the potential catastrophic discharge problem associated with electrostatic micromachines. Transmission of a 2.5-Gb/s directly modulated 1550-nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser through the tunable filter shows no power penalty.

Keywords

Fabry-Perot resonators; electro-optical filters; micro-optics; optical communication equipment; optical tuning; torsion; wavelength division multiplexing; 1500 to 1600 nm; 1550 nm; 2.5 Gbit/s; Al/sub 0.1/Ga/sub 0.9/As-Al/sub 0.85/Ga/sub 0.15/As; DWDM optical networks; Fabry-Perot cavity; continuous tuning range; directly modulated vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser transmission; distributed Bragg reflectors; photonic MEM devices; torsional micromechanical structure; widely tunable torsional optical filter; Electrostatics; Laser tuning; Micromechanical devices; Optical filters; Optical tuning; Power lasers; Surface discharges; Surface emitting lasers; Tunable circuits and devices; Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2002.1003104

Filename

1003104