Photonic crystal waveguide switches with movable slabs

Photonic crystal waveguide switches with movable micro- electro-mechanical actuators are proposed and fabricated by silicon micromachining. The switch structure consists of in-line input and output photonic crystal waveguide slabs, and a switching slab to bridge the gap between the waveguides. By driving the switching slab with a micro electro-mechanical actuator, the transmission between the waveguides is modulated. For driving the slabs, two kinds of actuator, i.e., vertical and parallel motion actuators are proposed for the respective switches. The switching characteristics are also investigated by calculations using the finite-difference time-domain method.