Abstract
We investigate experimentally and theoretically the power consumption
of a notch filter using a thermooptic long-period grating, which is induced
by a heater array consisting of periodic heaters and pads made of metal thin-film.
Since the power consumed by the heater array is converted to joule heat that
generates the thermooptic long-period grating, the characteristics of the
notch filter are dynamically controlled by adjusting it. The power necessary
for appropriate coupling efficiency depends on the parameters of the heater
array, which are the width and length of a heater, pad width, and the thickness
of the thin-film. To analyze the dependence, we fabricated several notch filters
with different heater lengths and pad widths. In addition, we simulated the
influence of the parameters on the power consumption using some
approximation and assumptions. Through the experiment and the simulation,
it is shown that the experimentally obtained changes of the consumed power
depending on the parameters follow a trend achieved theoretically. Moreover,
the experimental results show that the consumed power decreases by more than
50% as the heater length is reduced from 500 to 50 $\mu$m.
Finally, we suggest a few guidelines on the parameters required to reduce
the power consumption.
© 2009 IEEE
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