New Developments of MEMS Technology for Fiber Optic Components

Abstract

This paper reviews the recent research and development of optical MEMS devices for fiber optic applications using the examples from the author's own. Although no small attention has been paid in particular for crossconnect of large input and output port count for these years, optical fiber network has more rooms of practical use of the MEMS technology in the small-scale fiber components such as optical aligning mechanism, fiber dispersion compensator, and variable optical attenuator. Up-to-date optical MEMS research topics are also presented such as the combination of the photonic band-gap crystal waveguides with micromechanical optical modulators.