Microcantilever-integrated photonic circuits for broadband laser beam scanning

Abstract

Laser beam scanning is central to many applications, including displays, microscopy, three-dimensional mapping, and quantum information. Reducing the scanners to microchip form factors has spurred the development of very-large-scale photonic integrated circuits of optical phased arrays and focal plane switched arrays. An outstanding challenge remains to simultaneously achieve a compact footprint, broad wavelength operation, and low power consumption. Here, we introduce a laser beam scanner that meets these requirements. Using microcantilevers embedded with silicon nitride nanophotonic circuitry, we demonstrate broadband, one- and two-dimensional steering of light with wavelengths from 410 nm to 700 nm. The microcantilevers have ultracompact ~0.1 mm${}^2$ areas, consume ~31 to 46 mW of power, are simple to control, and emit a single light beam. The microcantilevers are monolithically integrated in an active photonic platform on 200-mm silicon wafers. The microcantilever-integrated photonic circuits miniaturize and simplify light projectors to enable versatile, power-efficient, and broadband laser scanner microchips.

References in corpus (7)

• Experimental demonstration of painting arbitrary and dynamic potentials for Bose-Einstein condensates
• High-speed programmable photonic circuits in a cryogenically compatible, visible-NIR 200 mm CMOS architecture
• MEMS for Photonic Integrated Circuits
• Monolithically integrated, broadband, high-efficiency silicon nitride-on-silicon waveguide photodetectors in a visible-light integrated photonics platform
• Power-Efficient Silicon Nitride Thermo-Optic Phase Shifters for Visible Light
• Non-redundant optical phased array
• Optical phased array neural probes for beam-steering in brain tissue

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Monolithically integrated, broadband, high-efficiency silicon nitride-on-silicon waveguide photodetectors in a visible-light integrated photonics platform
• Synchronous micromechanically resonant programmable photonic circuits
• Thermally Induced Refractive Index Trimming of Visible-Light Silicon Nitride Waveguides Using Suspended Heaters