Temperature Insensitive Micromachined GaAlAs/GaAs Vertical Cavity Wavelength Filter

Takeru AMANO, Fumio KOYAMA, Nobuhiko NISHIYAMA, Akihiro MATSUTANI, Kenichi IGA

Summary :

A novel temperature insensitive wavelength filter consisting of GaAlAs/GaAs distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) has been demonstrated. This micromachined DBR is mechanically tuned by differential thermal expansion. The strain-induced displacement of one mirror can generate wavelength tuning and trimming functions with an adjustable temperature dependence. We succeeded in the control of temperature dependence in this micromachined semiconductor filter by properly designing a vertical cavity structure. The achieved temperature dependence was as small as +0.01 nm/K, which is one-tenth of that of conventional semiconductor based optical filters. Also, a wavelength trimming of over 20 nm was demonstrated after completing the device fabrication. In addition, we demonstrated a 4 4 multiple wavelength micromachined vertical cavity filter array. The multi-wavelength filter array with a wavelength span of 45 nm was fabricated by partially etching off a GaAs wavelength control layer loaded on the top surface of device.

• Publication: IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications Vol.E84-B No.5 pp.1304-1310
• Publication Date: 2001/05/01
• Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Joint Special Issue on Recent Progress in Optoelectronics and Communications)
• Category: Optical Passive Devices and Modules

Authors

Takeru AMANO
Fumio KOYAMA
Nobuhiko NISHIYAMA
Akihiro MATSUTANI
Kenichi IGA

Keyword

wavelength tuning,  micromachining,  semiconductor DBR,  wavelength trimming,  vertical cavity filter,  multiple wavelength