Abstract
Tuning and reconfiguring of nanophotonic components are needed to realize systems incorporating many components. The electrostatic force can deform a structure and tune its optical response. Despite the success of electrostatic actuators, they suffer from trade-offs between tuning voltage, tuning range, and on-chip area. Piezoelectric actuation could resolve these challenges, but only pm-per-volt scale wavelength tunability has been achieved. Here we propose and demonstrate compact piezoelectric actuators, called nanobenders, that transduce tens of nanometers per volt. By leveraging the non-uniform electric field from submicron electrodes, we generate bending of a piezoelectric nanobeam. Combined with a sliced photonic crystal cavity to sense displacement, we show tuning of an optical resonance by ~ 5 nm V−1 (0.6 THz V−1) and between 1520 ~ 1560 nm (~ 400 linewidths) within 4 V. Finally, we consider tunable nanophotonic components enabled by the nanobenders.
Highlights
Tuning and reconfiguring of nanophotonic components are needed to realize systems incorporating many components
By considering the interplay between non-uniform electric fields and transverse components of the piezoelectric tensor d, we discover an actuation mechanism specific to nanoscale piezoelectric actuators that leads to a two order of magnitude increase in achievable displacements
The enormous sensitivity and tuning range achieved in these nanobenders allow us to achieve a significant breakthrough in NOEM performance
Summary
Tuning and reconfiguring of nanophotonic components are needed to realize systems incorporating many components. State-of-the-art optomechanical cavities routinely achieve coupling coefficients gOM/2π in excess of 100 GHz nm−1, and largely satisfy the former requirement It is more-so the latter requirement of large voltage-induced displacement, which has remained a formidable challenge in this context. Electrostatic forces are generated by the voltage-induced polarization in a material They do not require any special material property and have been previously used to implement a variety of NOEM systems. We show how manifestation of the piezoelectric effect in a nanostructure can be used to realize transducers with capabilities beyond the range/footprint/speed/sensitivity trade-off present in electrostatic devices. We demonstrate a “zipper” optomechanical cavity[24,25] actuated by four nanobenders that deform the structure to tune the optical resonance wavelength by ~ 5 nm V−1. We further show that the displacement generated by the nanobenders is sufficiently large to “zip” and “unzip” the zipper cavity, reversibly manipulating the mechanical mode structure of nanomechanical resonators with switchable contact forces
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