Photonic MEMS switches going commercial

One of the technical challenges the current data revolution faces is finding an efficient way to route the data. This task is usually performed by electronic switches, while the data itself is transferred using light confined in optical waveguides. For this reason, conversion from an optical to an electronic signal and back-conversion are required, which costs energy and limits the amount of transferable information. These drawbacks are avoidable with a full optical switch operation. One of the most promising approaches is based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), thanks to decisive advantages such as low optical loss and energy consumption, monolithic integration, and high scalability. Indeed, the largest photonic switch ever demonstrated uses this approach.

Commercialization

Until now, those MEMS photonic switches have been fabricated using nonstandard and complex processes in laboratory environments, which has made their commercialization difficult. But University of California Berkeley researchers initiated a collaboration that gathered engineers from different universities worldwide to demonstrate that the difficulties could be overcome. They created a photonic MEMS switch using a commercially available complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication process without modification. The use of this well-known microfabrication platform represents a huge step toward industrialization because it is compatible with most current technologies, cost-effective, and suited for high-volume production.

Switch fabrication

In their research, END