Low-Voltage Silicon Photonic MEMS Switch with Vertical Actuation

We present a vertically movable silicon photonic MEMS switch realized in IMEC’s standard silicon photonics platform followed by a dedicated postprocessing for MEMS release. The device has six optical ports, which enable four switching configurations with a safe electrical isolation of the switch’s actuator. A low actuation voltage of 3.75 V is required to efficiently switch the optical signal from the drop port to the through port of the device. The device exhibits port extinctions of 16 dB and 26 dB at its OFF and ON states, respectively. With an insertion loss of 35 nm, this component paves the way for low-power scalable circuits in MEMS-enabled silicon photonics.