Silicon microspheres for optoelectronic applications

Abstract

Having high quality factors, optical microsphere resonators are shown to be ideal circuit elements for wavelength division multiplexing. Silicon, as a common semiconductor and thus being a building block in the integrated circuits, also is a very important material with its optical properties. We have experimentally observed the shifts in resonance wavelengths of an electrically driven silicon microsphere of 500 microns in radius, in the near-IR. We have used a DFB laser at 1475nm, and applied voltages ranging from 0V to 9V to the microsphere and observed the respected shifts in the resonance wavelengths around 0.005 nm to 0.050 nm, and respective shifts in the refractive index are 10(-5) to 10(-4).