Design, fabrication, and characterization of an optofluidic phase modulator array based on the piezoelectric effect

In this paper, an optofluidic phase modulator array based on the piezoelectric effect is designed, fabricated, and characterized. This array is composed of three piezoelectric ceramics arranged on the vertices of an equilateral triangle. A transparent liquid fills the inner cavity of the ceramics. Due to the inverse piezoelectric effect, the length of the transparent liquid is changed at different voltages, which contributes to the optical phase modulation. According to experiment results, it is found that our modulator arrays exert continuous optical phase adjustment ability. When the voltage ranges from 0 to 135 V, the relative length variation reaches up to 9.286 mu m, and consequently our proposed modulator arrays perform about 9.685 pi optical phase modulation. (C) 2022 Optica Publishing Group

Automated summary

In this paper, an optofluidic phase modulator array based on the piezoelectric effect is designed, fabricated, and characterized. The array consists of three piezoelectric ceramics arranged on the vertices of an equilateral triangle. By changing the length of a transparent liquid filled in the ceramics through the inverse piezoelectric effect, optical phase modulation is achieved. Experimental results show that our modulator arrays have the ability to continuously adjust optical phase. The relative length variation can reach up to 9.286 μm when the voltage ranges from 0 to 135 V, resulting in approximately 9.685π optical phase modulation.