Tunable elastomer-based virtually imaged phased array

Virtually imaged phased arrays (VIPAs) offer a high potential for wafer-level integration and superior optical properties compared to conventional gratings. We introduce an elastomer-based tunable VIPA enabling fine tuning of the dispersion characteristics. It consists of a poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layer sandwiched between silver bottom and top coatings, which form the VIPA's high reflective and semi-transparent mirror, respectively. The latter also acts as an electrode for Joule heating, such that the optical PDMS resonator cavity tuning is carried out via a combination of thermal expansion and the thermo-optic effect. Analogous to the free spectral range (FSR), based on a VIPA specific dispersion law, we introduce a new characteristic VIPA performance measure, namely the free angular range (FAR). We report a tuning span of one FAR achieved by a 7.2K temperature increase of a 170μm PDMS VIPA. Both resonance quality and tunability are analyzed in numerical simulations and experiments.