An optical waveguide accelerometer based on tunable asymmetrical Fano resonance in a ring-resonator-coupled Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is proposed and analyzed. A Fano resonance accelerometer has a relatively large workspace of coupling coefficients with high sensitivity, which has potential application in inertial navigation, missile guidance, and attitude control of satellites. Due to the interference between a high-Q resonance pathway and a coherent background pathway, a steep asymmetric line shape is generated, which greatly improves the sensitivity of this accelerometer. The sensitivity of the accelerometer is about 111.75 mW/g. A 393-fold increase in sensitivity is achieved compared with a conventional MZI accelerometer and is approximately equal to the single ring structure.

High sensitivity optical waveguide accelerometer based on Fano resonance

The performance of flexible waveguides based microsystems such as optical waveguide sensors or a lab-on-a-chip platform is closely related to the parameters of the waveguides and substrates. In order to achieve enhanced performance of microsystems, we proposed a concept of flexible multilayer substrate based waveguides. We show that the mechanism properties of the flexible substrates and waveguides including the Young's modulus and the structural thickness can be well engineered and regulated by ranging the configuration of the multilayers with different materials. The multilayer substrate itself can also serve as a thin-film optical waveguide. The experimental results show that this structure is suitable for developing optical sensor chips like double-ring resonator based accelerometers. As an example, the theoretical analysis based on the tunable Young's modulus and thickness of the waveguides also provides an approach to achieve manufacturing error insensitive or accelerometer chips with different sensitivities between 10 per g and 53 per g. The sensitivity will be tenfold if propagation loss of the waveguides is reduced from 1.9 dB/cm to 0.3 dB/cm. This tunable structure promises to meet the requirements of various sensors and lab-on-a-chip systems for displacement, chemistry or biology measurements.

Flexible multilayer substrate based optical waveguides: Applications to optical sensing

A tunable three-dimensional silicon nitride racetrack resonator was experimentally demonstrated, with a microring resonator on a bottom layer and a feedback cross-coupled waveguide on a top layer. At a 1559.3-nm wavelength, an extinction ratio of more than 14 dB and free spectral range of 2.7 nm can be realized with a quality factor of about $1.88\times 10^{4}$ . The filter performance, such as the resonance wavelength and extinction ratio, can be thermo-optically tuned based on the electrical control of a heater above the feedback waveguide. The presented device has a potential to be applied as a tunable modulator/switch as well as a highly sensitive sensor.

Three-Dimensional Cross-Coupled Silicon Nitride Racetrack Resonator-Based Tunable Optical Filter

Waveguide ring resonator is the sensing element of resonant integrated optical gyroscope (RIOG) This paper reports a polymer-based ring resonator with a low propagation loss of about 0476 dB/cm for RIOG The geometrical parameters of the waveguide and the coupler of the resonator were optimally designed We also discussed the optical properties and gyroscope performance of the polymer resonator which shows a high quality factor of about 105 The polymer-based RIOG exhibits a limited sensitivity of less than 20 deg/h for the low and medium resolution navigation systems

/pdf/low-loss-polymer-based-ring-resonator-for-resonant-1aptiv680g.pdf

Low-Loss polymer-based ring resonator for resonant integrated optical gyroscopes

https://photonics.intec.ugent.be/download/pub_3243.pdf

A tunable polymer waveguide ring filter fabricated with UV-based soft imprint technique

We demonstrate theoretically a tunable optical ring resonator incorporating an asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and two phase shifters. The optimal resonance state of the ring resonator with different geometries can be achieved by tuning the two embedded phase shifters. Distinct intensity and phase responses and transmission spectra characteristics are newly observed by setting different structural parameters such as the asymmetrical path lengths of the waveguides and the coupling ratio of the directional couplers in the MZI. The performance characteristics related to the radius of the ring cavity and the propagation losses in the waveguides are also discussed. At optimal resonance, it is shown that sharp intensity response and tunable narrow-bandwidth spectra can be achieved especially for resonators with a highly asymmetrical configuration. Such device has a potential in sensing, switching and filtering applications.

Jun Hong

Papers

Tunable Optical Ring Resonator Integrated With Asymmetric Mach–Zehnder Interferometer