Kenichi MASUDA, Atsushi TATE, Mariko ISHIDA, Takanori SUZUKI and Hiroyuki TSUDA

School of Integrated Design Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan

(Received January 6, 2006; Accepted April 19, 2006)

We propose a beam steering type optical switch employing a phase shifter. It consists of collimating waveguide mirrors, an arrayed-waveguide which has deep trenches incorporating polymer materials, and input/output waveguides. The incident light is guided to the front mirror, where it is then collimated, and input to the arrayed waveguide. The number of trenches filled with polymer linearly increases in order. The refractive index of the polymer can be controlled with temperature, and the propagation direction of the output light from the arrayed waveguide can also be controlled. A switch with 15 waveguides in the array has been fabricated. The chip size is about 2.5× 9.0 mm², the insertion loss is 10 dB, and the extinction ratio is about 10–13 dB.

Key words: optical switch, thermo-optic effect, optical waveguide, beam steering, phase shifter