Suspended Silicon Waveguide with Sub-Wavelength Grating Cladding for Optical MEMS in Mid-Infrared

Mid-infrared (MIR) photonics are generating considerable interest because of the potential applications in spectroscopic sensing, thermal imaging, and remote sensing. Silicon photonics is believed to be a promising solution to realize MIR photonic integrated circuits (PICs). The past decade has seen a huge growth in MIR PIC building blocks. However, there is still a need for the development of MIR reconfigurable photonics to enable powerful on-chip optical systems and new functionalities. In this paper, we present an MIR (3.7~4.1 μm wavelength range) MEMS reconfiguration approach using the suspended silicon waveguide platform on the silicon-on-insulator. With the sub-wavelength grating claddings, the photonic waveguide can be well integrated with the MEMS actuator, thus offering low-loss, energy-efficient, and effective reconfiguration. We present a simulation study on the waveguide design and depict the MEMS-integration approach. Moreover, we experimentally report the suspended waveguide with propagation loss (−2.9 dB/cm) and bending loss (−0.076 dB each). The suspended waveguide coupler is experimentally investigated. In addition, we validate the proposed optical MEMS approach using a reconfigurable ring resonator design. In conclusion, we experimentally demonstrate the proposed waveguide platform’s capability for MIR MEMS-reconfigurable photonics, which empowers the MIR on-chip optical systems for various applications.