Microelectromechanical optical crossconnects (OXCs)

摘要

This paper reports the design, fabrication, and testing of drawbridge micromirrors that is used to form a monolithic 4 X 4 optical crossconnect (OXC) having dimensions about 4 mm X 4 mm. The OXC is composed of 16 individual drawbridge micromirrors that are fabricated by the surface micromachining technology and then manually assembled. In each drawbridge micromirror the mirror is driven by electrostatic force to cut off the laser beam or let it pass through, enabling the switching. The measured switching times range from 94 μs to 181.1 μs for the switches with different bending bean sizes. The configuration of this OXC is scalable and capable to build up a large array of OXC system.