Prof. Dr. Niels Quack
EPFL, CH-Lausanne
»Silicon Photonics MEMS«

Abstract:

In this talk, we will discuss the opportunities provided by exploring mechanics at the micro- and nanoscale to enable novel photonic devices and systems. Technology advances have led to a dramatic increase in complexity in photonic integration over the past decades, a development which has been accelerated by recent applications in datacenter communications and enabled by the availability of standardized mature technology offerings. In order to enhance functionality and to reduce power consumption in photonic integrated circuits, we use mechanical movement of wave-guiding structures at the micro- and nanoscale. The mechanical movement gives access to a strong modulation of the effective index and the possibility to include mechanical latching and thus non-volatile states to produce reconfigurable photonic networks on-chip that require zero power consumption to remain in any given configuration state. We demonstrate basic operations in photonic integrated circuits on-chip, such as phase shifting, attenuation or photonic switching. Due to their small footprint and low insertion loss, we have shown that such MEMS-based components can be engineered into large arrays containing several thousands of unit cells with outstanding system performance, paving the way for efficient implementation of large-scale, ultra-low power reconfigurable photonic integrated circuits.