Electrostatically driven micro-optical switching device based on interference of light and evanescent coupling

Two types of electrostatically driven optical switching devices have been developed in this paper. An interferometric optical switching device realizes selective wavelength filtering by the interference of lightwaves between two half mirrors. Also, an evanescent coupling surface-output optical switching device realizes on-off switching by evanescent coupling and physical contact. Their basic characteristics are experimentally evaluated. By integrating these devices on a substrate, switching devices with wavelength filtering and on-off switching are proposed.