Trimming of silicon-on-insulator ring resonators with a polymerizable liquid crystal cladding.

We demonstrate the trimming of silicon-on-insulator ring resonators with a cladding layer of polymerizable liquid crystal. An electric field is applied over the cladding layer to tune the resonance of the ring resonators, which is then fixed by UV illumination of the polymerizable liquid crystal. A range of 0.56 nm is obtained. We provide the material properties of the polymerizable liquid crystal, give a description of the tuning mechanism and present experimental results. This method opens up possibilities in the field of low-cost trimming of photonic devices.

[1]  Nahum Izhaky,et al.  High-speed optical modulation based on carrier depletion in a silicon waveguide. , 2007, Optics express.

[2]  P. Yeh.  Optics of Liquid Crystal Displays , 2007, 2007 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics - Pacific Rim.

[3]  D. Broer,et al.  INSITU PHOTOPOLYMERIZATION OF ORIENTED LIQUID-CRYSTALLINE ACRYLATES .3. ORIENTED POLYMER NETWORKS FROM A MESOGENIC DIACRYLATE , 1989 .

[4]  P. Dumon,et al.  Fabrication of Photonic Wire and Crystal Circuits in Silicon-on-Insulator Using 193-nm Optical Lithography , 2009, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[5]  R. Baets,et al.  Trimming of silicon ring resonator by electron beam induced compaction and strain. , 2008, Optics express.

[6]  Gaetano Assanto,et al.  Tunable wavelength-selective add–drop in liquid crystals on a silicon microresonator , 2007 .

[7]  Larry R. Dalton,et al.  Electrically Tunable Ring Resonators Incorporating Nematic Liquid Crystals as Cladding Layers , 2003 .

[8]  J. Cunningham,et al.  Thermally tunable silicon racetrack resonators with ultralow tuning power. , 2010, Optics express.

[9]  K. Neyts,et al.  Tuning silicon-on-insulator ring resonators with in-plane switching liquid crystals , 2011 .

[10]  Roel Baets,et al.  Wide tuning of silicon-on-insulator ring resonators with a liquid crystal cladding. , 2011, Optics letters.

[11]  Roel Baets,et al.  Tuning of silicon-on-insulator ring resonators with liquid crystal cladding using the longitudinal field component. , 2009, Optics letters.

[12]  Dirk J. Broer,et al.  In-situ photopolymerization of oriented liquid-crystalline acrylates , 1990 .