InP-based micro-mechanical tunable and selective photodetector for WDM systems

The design and the fabrication of vertical InP-based micro-opto-electro-mechanical devices are reported. These are based on micromachined III-V semiconductor structures realized by selective removal of adapted sacrificial layers in order to produce Fabry-Perot resonant microcavity. Continuous wavelength tuning of 50nm around 1.55 mu m for a 15 Volt bias actuation has been demonstrated. Resonant peak full width at half maximum of about 10nm at 1.5 mu m has been performed on a InP/air gap multilayered interferometric filter. The integration of absorbing layers inside the cavity will allow us to realize Resonant Cavity Enhanced (RCE) photonic devices with thinner, and therefore faster, photodetector structures with high quantum efficiencies.