Moving Polymer Waveguides and Latching Actuator for 2 $ \times$ 2 MEMS Optical Switch

We describe a novel type of MEMS optical switch based on moving waveguide which has merits inherited from both MEMS and integrated optics technologies. It provides an expandable 2 times 2 switching capability, a first in this category of switches. The switch is built by assembling independently optimized latching silicon actuator and soft polymer waveguides. The actuator is based on two new structures: a microhinge, dubbed the fork hinge, and a latching structure using a precompressed microspring. The mechanical switching speed was measured below 0.5 ms. The complex polymer waveguide structure was thoroughly characterized to obtain all the components of the optical loss. This analysis allowed us to estimate robustly the insertion loss of the assembled optical switch below 3 dB and to identify the possibilities to improve this figure.