The invention relates to the field of microphotonics, and in particular to tuning a photonic bandgap in a microcavity waveguide structure via mechanical deformation.
The vast majority of microphotonic devices possess a wide spectrum of applications. Most of these devices are static devices, where reconfiguration is not possible after device fabrication. To achieve tuning of microphotonic devices, the electro-optic effect, the charge-carrier effect (via temperature and/or doping), and the liquid crystal tuning methods have been used. There is a need in the art for a method of tuning on the order of 13 nm for resonant frequency centered at 1.552 μm for the 40 nm wide C-band in optical telecommunications. Moreover, there is a need also to allow tunability and control in silicon microphotonic devices.
According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided a photonic bandgap microcavity. The microcavity includes a membrane structure that can experience strain. A photonic bandgap waveguide element is formed on the membrane structure having a defect so that when the membrane structure is strained, the photonic bandgap waveguide element is tuned to a selective amount.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of forming a photonic bandgap microcavity. The method includes providing a membrane structure that can experience strain. The method also includes forming a photonic bandgap waveguide element on the membrane structure having a defect so that when the membrane structure is strained, the photonic bandgap waveguide element is tuned to a selective amount.
The invention uses a new concept of tuning a photonic bandgap in a microcavity waveguide structure via mechanical deformation. A photonic crystal structure is superimposed onto a thin sub-micron deformable membrane, and controlled deformation of the membrane will allow the geometric lattice structure to be tuned via mechanical strain. Membrane deformation is made possible with the use of thin-film piezoelectric actuators. With the controlled deformation, optical properties of the microcavity waveguide, such as resonance in the bandgap of the transmission spectra, the size of the bandgap, the quality factor Q of a cavity, and other optical properties can be tuned. Fine control of the mechanical strain, through the piezoelectric actuators, will allow fine-tuning of these optical properties. The inventive device can be used in integrated photonic chip architectures and devices, such as low-threshold microlasers, filters, signal routers, and the like.
Moreover, this invention will also allow for dynamic tuning of these properties, either in part of the device function or in response to external disturbances. Real-time reconfigurability of the photonic crystals can be achieved. The range of tunability is on the same order of magnitude with electro-optic and charge-carrier tunability effects in compound semiconductor materials.
In addition, mechanical strain-tuning provides tunability to silicon microphotonic devices, given the absence of electro-optic and charge-carrier effects in silicon. Although thermal tuning provides an alternative for tunability in silicon microphotonics, it requires high power consumption, has poor spatial localization of the tunability, and has a relatively slow response time compared to mechanical strain-tuning with piezoelectric actuators.
A single mode photonic crystal waveguide 2 is used to both confine light along two dimensions and maintain a preferred polarization of the guided mode, as shown in
The addition of a defect 8 by creating a break in the periodicity in the 1 dimensional photonic crystal waveguide 2 allows a state to propagate in the bandgap. This state is analogous to a defect or impurity state in a semiconductor that forms a level within the semiconductor bandgap. Conceptually, this is also analogous to 1-dimensional Fabry-Perot resonators, although it has a coplanar geometry and the ability to give rise to strong field confinement. The break in the periodicity leads to a defect state that is localized in real space and therefore extended in the wavevector space.
Control of the periodicity of defect 8, with length ad, leads to tuning of the resonant frequency as a tunable resonator or filter. While electro-optic and thermal tuning could be used to control the optical path length or the break in periodicity, mechanical tuning is preferable due to reasons described earlier.
The thin-film membrane 6, on the order of 200–400 nm in thickness, is mechanically-strained through the thin-film piezoelectric actuators 4, such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT), poly-vinylidene fluoride (PVDF), zinc oxide or aluminum nitride. The high power density, which is on the order of 1000 W/kg, of the PZT actuators provides a predicted and experimentally measured strain of approximately 0.2% on the deformable membrane. The specific mechanical tuning range depends on the design, actual fabrication, and material selection. With super-imposing the photonic crystal waveguide 2, both the lattice constant and the ratio of defect length over the lattice constant are changed.
As the expected tunability range is on the order of 1%, direct numerical FDTD simulation to capture the effects would require a very fine-mesh and would be computationally intensive. Instead, perturbation theory of Maxwell's equation provides an elegant method to describe the tunability, overcoming the issues of numerical accuracy. Moreover, perturbation theory captures shape-profile distortions in the periodic structures, which in our scenario is the elliptical profile of the circular holes under deformation. The elliptical displacement profile is derived analytically, beginning from the stress mechanics of the hole-in-a-plate situation. The change in the resonant frequency with respect to an applied external perturbation, dω/dα, can be described as follows:
where ω(0) is the resonant frequency before strain-deformation, E(0) the electric field distribution before strain-deformation, α the perturbation parameter (external applied stress in this scenario) and ∈ the permittivity. Specifically, the top integral, summed over the dielectric boundary area A, can be expressed as:
where dh/dα is the change in dielectric boundary given the applied external stress, E∥ the electric field parallel to the boundary, D⊥ the electric displacement perpendicular to the boundary, Δ∈12 the difference of permittivity ∈1 and ∈2, and Δ∈12−1 the difference in the reciprocal of the permittivities.
The bottom integral, <E(0)|∈|E(0)>, is the volume integral of the electric field in the structure of interest. With the unperturbed FDTD results, the perturbation computations are performed, using analytical results of the elliptical nature under stress deformation to derive dh/dα, and employing interpolation between the discretized FDTD mesh to obtain E∥ and D⊥. The results show a 1.41% tunability in the resonance peak with 0.5% externally applied tensile strain. The tuning is linear with response to the applied strain, and has a 13 nm shift in resonance at 0.3% externally applied strain for C-band telecommunication wavelengths.
Specifically, confinement of strain at solely the defect cavity (changing only ad) results in a +0.58% change in resonance wavelength for +0.5% change in ad. Secondly, increasing only the lattice constant a, however, has two effects: (1) an increase in the geometric size and hence increasing the operating wavelength and shifting the bandgap (in terms of wavelengths) upwards, (2) a decrease in the ad/a ratio and hence leading to a decrease in the resonance wavelength within the bandgap. The net result of all these effects is found through computation and has a +0.8215% change in resonance wavelength for a +0.5% change in lattice constant a.
Finally, the effects of ellipticity are included and found to decrease the resonance wavelength. The complete computation, including strain at defect cavity, strain at lattice constant and ellipticity of holes, shows a +1.41% change in resonance wavelength for a +0.5% mechanical tensile strain.
Other configurations of tunable photonic crystal waveguides are illustrated in
Although the present invention has been shown and described with respect to several preferred embodiments thereof, various changes, omissions and additions to the form and detail thereof, may be made therein, without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
This application claims priority from provisional application Ser. No. 60/395,926 filed Jul. 15, 2002, provisional application Ser. No. 60/467,854 filed on May 5, 2003, and is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. Unknown filed Jul. 14, 2003 (Express Mail No. EV271853767US), entitled “Reconfigurable Microphotonics Devices Via Deformable Membrane Platforms,” by common assignee.
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
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5313535 | Williams | May 1994 | A |
6445838 | Caracci et al. | Sep 2002 | B1 |
20020054424 | Miles | May 2002 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country |
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0210843 | Feb 2002 | WO |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20040076362 A1 | Apr 2004 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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60395926 | Jul 2002 | US | |
60467854 | May 2003 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 10619203 | Jul 2003 | US |
Child | 10620072 | US |