Shinichi Kaneko

Silicon micro optical switching device with an electromagnetically operated cantilever

Abstract We report on a new concept 2×2 fiber-optical switching device with an electromagnetically operated cantilever. The device is composed of a switching mirror module and a fiber array module. The switching mirror module consists of a fixed mirror, a moving mirror, a cantilever, support glasses and magnets. The mirrors and the cantilever are micromachined from one silicon wafer by deep silicon etching. As the cantilever has a magnetic film on its surface, it is driven by an electromagnet and latched by permanent magnets. The fiber array module consists of four optical fibers with graded index fibers, which are aligned parallel and fixed in a glass holder. The required current to operate the cantilever is 34 mA (0.3 V) and 20 ms for the pulse width, and the required magnetomotive force is 9.5 A·turns. The shortest switching time is 20 ms. The surface roughness of the mirrors are about 30 nm, the reflection loss of one mirror is −0.05 dB, crosstalk is smaller than −60 dB, and the insertion loss is −1.5 dB. Owing to the optical fibers preassembled as a module, the proposed device facilitates the optical path adjustment and the assembly.

Micro-optical switch with uni-directional I/O fibers

The authors have developed a new 2/spl times/2 micro-optical switch. The switch features a uni-directional input/output and a drive mechanism with latch functions. The newly developed structure combines two moving mirrors and a fixed V mirror to implement a 2/spl times/2 micro-optical switch with uni-directional input/output. Furthermore, the moving mirrors have been reduced in size by integrating the drive and latch functions by the use of magnetic shaft mirrors and driving coils. The micro-optical switch has been implemented as a module mounted in a ceramic package. The modular switch is 23.5/spl times/9.86/spl times/6.76 mm in size and provides a switching time of 1.3 ms for 15 V (469 mA) and an input pulse width of 1 ms. The reflectivity of the moving mirror is 98.6% (reflection loss: 0.06 dB) and the connection loss between the fixed mirror surfaces is 5.4 dB.

1/spl times/2 micro mechanical fiber optical switches using v-grooves on sidewall

Fiber optical switches become more important with the growth of fiber based optical telecommunication networks. 1/spl times/2 micro mechanical fiber moving optical switches without reflective index matching oil, using V-grooves on sidewall have been developed. A compact fiber optical switch without reflective index matching oil was fabricated using precise surfaces and accurate fiber positioning by anisotropic TMAH etched V-grooves. It exhibited good performance, of short switching time (2 m sec), low insertion loss (0.5 dB), and low back reflection.