Optical phased array using single crystalline silicon high-contrast-gratings for beamsteering

Abstract

We present a single crystalline silicon optical phased array using high-contrast-gratings (HCG) for fast two dimensional beamforming and beamsteering at 0.5 MHz. Since there are various applications for beamforming and beamsteering such as 3D imaging, optical communications, and light detection and ranging (LIDAR), it is great interest to develop ultrafast optical phased arrays. However, the beamsteering speed of optical phased arrays using liquid crystal and electro-wetting are typically limited to tens of milliseconds. Optical phased arrays using micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technologies can operate in the submegahertz range, but generally require metal coatings. The metal coating unfortunately cause bending of mirrors due to thermally induced stress. The novel MEMS-based optical phased array presented here consists of electrostatically driven 8 × 8 HCG pixels fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer. The HCG mirror is designed to have 99.9% reflectivity at 1550 nm wavelength without any reflective coating. The size of the HCG mirror is 20 × 20 μm2 and the mass is only 140 pg, much lighter than traditional MEMS mirrors. Our 8 × 8 optical phased array has a total field of view of ±10° × 10° and a beam width of 2°. The maximum phase shift regarding the actuation gap defined by a 2 μm buried oxide layer of a SOI wafer is 1.7π at 20 V.