Silicon micro optical switching device with an electromagnetically operated cantilever

Abstract We report on a new concept 2×2 fiber-optical switching device with an electromagnetically operated cantilever. The device is composed of a switching mirror module and a fiber array module. The switching mirror module consists of a fixed mirror, a moving mirror, a cantilever, support glasses and magnets. The mirrors and the cantilever are micromachined from one silicon wafer by deep silicon etching. As the cantilever has a magnetic film on its surface, it is driven by an electromagnet and latched by permanent magnets. The fiber array module consists of four optical fibers with graded index fibers, which are aligned parallel and fixed in a glass holder. The required current to operate the cantilever is 34 mA (0.3 V) and 20 ms for the pulse width, and the required magnetomotive force is 9.5 A·turns. The shortest switching time is 20 ms. The surface roughness of the mirrors are about 30 nm, the reflection loss of one mirror is −0.05 dB, crosstalk is smaller than −60 dB, and the insertion loss is −1.5 dB. Owing to the optical fibers preassembled as a module, the proposed device facilitates the optical path adjustment and the assembly.