Silicon Photonic MEMS: Exploiting Mechanics at the Nanoscale to Enhance Photonic Integrated Circuits

With the maturing and the increasing complexity of Silicon Photonics technology, novel avenues are pursued to reduce power consumption and to provide enhanced functionality: exploiting mechanical movement in advanced Silicon Photonic Integrated Circuits provides a promising path to access a strong modulation of the effective index and to low power consumption by employing mechanically stable and thus non-volatile states. In this paper, we will discuss recent achievements in the development of MEMS enabled systems in Silicon Photonics and outline the roadmap towards reconfigurable general Photonic Integrated Circuits.