Refractive plate optical switches using off-axis V-groove array for fiber positioning

摘要

Anisotropically etched v-grooves on silicon substrate for the positioning of optical fibers have been widely implemented for fiber optics and optoelectronic applications. Because the anisotropic etching depends upon the crystallographicorientation of silicon, the v-grooves are normally formed parallel to the <110> direction. However, some applications, such as optical switches, and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM)/demultiplexing (DMUX) devices, fan-in and fan-out configurationfor fiber positioning are required.In this paper, we will report a single mode refractive plate switch where a micromachined silicon waferboard was implemented for passively positioning optical fibers. We successfully demonstrated a 2×2 single mode optical switch with less than 0.64dB loss.