High bandwidth on-chip capacitive tuning of microtoroid resonators

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for rapidly tuning silica microtoroid resonators using on-chip capacitive electrodes, preserving high quality factors and enabling advanced optical and radio frequency applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel design and fabrication technique for capacitive tuning of microtoroid resonators with maintained high quality factors.

Findings

Capacitive tuning achieves rapid resonance adjustments.

High quality factors are preserved during tuning.

Enables efficient radio to optical frequency conversion.

Abstract

We report on the design, fabrication and characterization of silica microtoroid based cavity opto-electromechanical systems (COEMS). Electrodes patterned onto the microtoroid resonators allow for rapid capacitive tuning of the optical whispering gallery mode resonances while maintaining their ultrahigh quality factor, enabling applications such as efficient radio to optical frequency conversion, optical routing and switching applications.