Zero-change foundry compatible silicon photonics MEMS optical switch
Abstract
Large-scale photonic switches are emerging as essential devices for energy-efficient optical interconnect in data centers and AI/ML clusters as a key enabler for high-bandwidth and low-latency connectivity. Combining micro-electro-mechanical (MEMS) based mechanical reconfigurability with silicon photonic integrated circuits can enable a large-scale, low-loss, programmable platform required for large-scale optical circuit switches. We demonstrate a broadband silicon photonics MEMS switch with more than 30 dB extinction ratio operating in C-band using a zero-change foundry-compatible process and Back-end-of-Line (BEOL) post-processing. The optical switch element exhibits an insertion loss of less than 1.5 dB with a low static power consumption of approx 20 nW at maximum actuation voltage. Our results illustrate that MEMS-based silicon photonics modulators and phase shifters can be used alongside standard silicon photonics components seamlessly in scenarios where performance in terms of footprint, extinction ratio, broad bandwidth, and low-loss operation is of paramount importance.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2608.03146,
title = {Zero-change foundry compatible silicon photonics MEMS optical switch},
author = {Arkadev Roy and Daniel Klawson and Jianheng Luo and Yiyang Zhi and Sirui Tang and Ming Wu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.03146},
year = {2026}
}