Mechano-optically co-designed highly-scalable silicon photonic MEMS switches with quasi-buckling-free 2 × 2 horizontal adiabatic directional couplers
Yinpeng Hu, Jiayue Zhu, Yunzhi Liu, Linyan Lyu, Ye Lu, Qian Ma, Huan Li, Liu Liu, Yaocheng Shi, Daoxin Dai · 2026
Read Mechano-optically co-designed highly-scalable silicon photonic MEMS switches with quasi-buckling-free 2 × 2 horizontal adiabatic directional couplers by Yinpeng Hu, Jiayue Zhu, Yunzhi Liu, Linyan Lyu, Ye Lu, Qian Ma, Huan Li, Liu Liu, Yaocheng Shi, Daoxin Dai (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13265846.txt.
Description
Yinpeng Hu and a large team wrote a 2026 photonics paper on tiny mechanical light switches built on silicon chips. Such switches steer light in optical networks and AI computing hardware. Earlier designs based on paired waveguides were hard to scale: vertical versions were complex to build, and flat versions buckled and lost performance.
Their flat switch adds strain-relief parts, anchors and extra bends, to keep waveguides from buckling. The built device showed low light loss and low crosstalk across a wide 180-nanometre band. It switched in about two microseconds and survived more than 7.2 billion cycles in durability tests. The team also built a full 64 by 64 switch array from the unit. They say standard chip foundry steps can make it, aiding large photonic circuits.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yinpeng Hu, Jiayue Zhu, Yunzhi Liu, Linyan Lyu, Ye Lu, Qian Ma, Huan Li, Liu Liu, Yaocheng Shi, Daoxin Dai |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 36884 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |