Fast Electro-optical Switching with Liquid Crystal Waveguides on a Silicon Backplane

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• Florenta Costache (Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems - Dresden)
• Friday 27 September 2013, 14:00-15:00
• Physics East 217.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Vincent Boyer.

Liquid crystals in their isotropic phase having properties such as large electro-optical Kerr constants, low optical loss and sub-microsecond response times are used in a new concept of field-induced optical waveguides. Low loss, fast 1×2 switching and variable power splitting devices could be demonstrated with appropriate chip design configurations based on this type of waveguides with special arrangements of electrodes. The chip fabrication was realized on a silicon backplane by means of wafer level micro-machining processes. In particular, for the electro-optical waveguide fabrication, we use the micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) technology available at the Fraunhofer IPMS . These devices were designed for operation at the 1.55 µm telecommunication wavelength. Nonetheless, configurations optimized at any wavelength from VIS to IR range are possible. The new waveguide concept enables the possibility of dynamic, continuously voltage controlled adjustment of optical signals transmitted in fiber optic networks.

This talk is part of the Cold Atoms series.

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• Bham Talks
• Cold Atoms
• Physics East 217
• What's on in Physics?

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