Compact Integrated Silicon Photonic MEMS Power Coupler For Programmable Photonics

Programmable photonics promise a plethora of optical functions while at the same time reducing the time and costs of photonic integrated circuit (PIC) development. One primary bottleneck for development of these systems is the difficulty in increasing component density because of excessive power consumption. We here present a MEMS-based Silicon Photonic power coupler that offers high optical performance (> 18 dB extinction ratio (ER), < 1.2 dB insertion loss (IL), and > 80 nm of optical bandwidth) within a compact footprint (25 µm × 150 µm) to provide a power-efficient active function: fast, continuous power tuning.