Relaxor piezoelectric film actuators, waveguides, and photonic crystals: Fabrication and characterization

Microscale wavelength de-multiplexers, and tunable filters are required for emerging advances in optical communication, and light based computing systems. This particular thesis emphasizes the utilization of piezoelectric relaxor ferroelectric single crystals for MEMS based applications such as optical micro-interconnects, microvalves and chemical sensing elements. First, a novel mechanism based on electric field gradient induced piezoactuation is proposed. This mechanism makes use of an interdigitated electrode structure for the actuation and the mechanism is tested in bulk and micron scale actuators.;Secondly, we have implemented the Crystal Ion Slicing technique for the fabrication of piezoelectric relaxor single crystal films from a bulk crystal. The films are characterized using X-Ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, and electron probe microanalysis studies.;Thirdly, we demonstrate for the first time optical waveguiding in piezoelectric relaxor ferroelectrics single crystals. We also demonstrate for the first time the fabrication and functioning of on-chip photonic crystals using the single crystal relaxor ferroelectrics.;Tunable optical filters (one-dimensional photonic crystals) are fabricated in these single crystal materials through micro- and nano-fabrication techniques. Optical waveguides needed for the filters are fabricated through helium implantation process. A thorough characterization of the filters is done by quantifying the optical response in the infrared wavelength range through the observation of band gaps. Finally, the technologies needed for the fabrication of a microscale beam routing filter is developed. These kind of devices have immediate applications in channel add-drop filter, wavelength division multiplexers, optical interconnects etc.