Improved performance of thermal optic switch using polymer/silica hybrid and air

By exploiting the polymer/silica hybrid and the air trench waveguide structures, we demonstrate a new type of low-power consuming and high-speed thermal-optic (TO) switch. Such a design provides an effective means to shorten the switching time of the TO switches, as well as to reduce the power consumption at the same time. This TO switch operated with less than 150 mus of switching time via a polymer/silica hybrid waveguide structure. Meanwhile, the power consumption wa