PROCEEDINGS ARTICLE | March 24, 2008
Proc. SPIE. 6975, Enabling Photonics Technologies for Defense, Security, and Aerospace Applications IV
KEYWORDS: Tunable lasers, Switches, Waveguides, Cladding, Electrodes, Liquid crystals, Electro optics, Prototyping, Microrings, Phased array optics
A new electro-optic waveguide platform, which provides unprecedented electro-optical phase delays (> 1mm), with very
low loss (< 0.5 dB/cm) and rapid response time (sub millisecond), is presented. This technology, developed by Vescent
Photonics, is based upon a unique liquid-crystal waveguide geometry, which exploits the tremendous electro-optic
response of liquid crystals while circumventing historic limitations of liquid crystals. The exceedingly large optical
phase delays accessible with this technology enable the design and construction of a new class of previously unrealizable
photonic devices. Examples include: a 1-D non-mechanical, analog beamsteerer with an 80° field of regard, a chip-scale
widely tunable laser, a chip-scale Fourier transform spectrometer (< 5 nm resolution demonstrated), widely tunable
micro-ring resonators, tunable lenses, ultra-low power (< 5 microWatts) optical switches, true optical time delay (up to
10 ns), and many more. All of these devices may benefit from established manufacturing technologies and ultimately
may be as inexpensive as a calculator display. Furthermore, this new integrated photonic architecture has applications
in a wide array of commercial and defense markets including: remote sensing, micro-LADAR, OCT, laser illumination,
phased array radar, optical communications, etc. Performance attributes of several example devices are presented.
