Design, fabrication and optical characterization of Fabry-Pérot tunable resonator based on microstructured Si and liquid crystal

Abstract

The results of a simulation of the optical properties of a silicon Fabry-Perot resonator (with liquid crystal filler in the cavity), operated on the shift of the interference bands in the infrared range are presented. The possibility of tuning the reflection coefficient from 0 to 0.95 (or transmission coefficient from 1 to 0.05) by changing the refractive index by 0.1 in the cavity and using the stop-bands and resonance peaks of high order is demonstrated. The prototype Fabry-Perot resonators were fabricated by dry and wet etching of (100)Si and (110)Si. Some of the resonators were fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator platform. A superposition of transmission peaks with reflection maxima, predicted from calculations, was confirmed experimentally, using infrared microspectroscopy, with a temperature variation from 20 oC to 65 oC and an applied electric field from 0V to 10V.