Broadside High Index Dielectric Beam Routing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a design for dielectric micro-prisms that can steer optical beams in the broadside direction, with easy fabrication methods suitable for silicon and elastic platforms, enabling applications in optical interconnects and sensing.

Contribution

It presents a novel geometry design for dielectric micro-prisms to control beam direction and introduces fabrication techniques for integration on silicon and elastic platforms.

Findings

Beam direction can be controlled by prism slope design.

Broadside beam routing demonstrated on silicon and elastic PDMS platforms.

Stress-induced beam scanning achieved on elastic platform.

Abstract

We propose a technique to control the beam direction of a dielectric optical micro-prism structure by properly designing its geometry. We show that by selectively choosing the slope of a high index micro prism, the direction of the radiated beam from the tip can be controlled in the broadside direction of the prism structure. We propose an easy fabrication method to integrate such broadside beam routers on a Si platform. We also propose a demonstrate a technique to build the beam router on an elastic PDMS platform which demonstrates stress induced beam scanning in the broadside This specific feature of beam direction control can find application in free space optical interconnects, plasmonics, solar cells, detectors, optical sensing etc.