Abstract

The switching time of existing thermocapillarity optical switches is about two orders of magnitude larger than that of other optical switches,such as a thermooptics switch and a free-space switch using microelectromechanical system technology. This paper reports a thermocapillarity switch whose switching time is comparable to that of the thermooptics and free-space switches. The greatly improved switching time is achieved by lowering the absolute viscosity of the refractive-index matching liquid and improving the switch design.

[IEEE ]

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