Trimming of silicon-on-insulator ring resonators with a polymerizable liquid crystal cladding

Abstract

We demonstrate the trimming of silicon-on-insulator ring resonators with a cladding layer of polymerizable liquid crystal. An electric field is applied over the cladding layer to tune the resonance of the ring resonators, which is then fixed by UV illumination of the polymerizable liquid crystal. A range of 0.56 nm is obtained. We provide the material properties of the polymerizable liquid crystal, give a description of the tuning mechanism and present experimental results. This method opens up possibilities in the field of low-cost trimming of photonic devices.