In-plane MEMS-based fabry-perot filter for high-speed wavelength-swept semiconductor laser

Abstract

This paper reports the development of a MEMS-based wavelength-swept semiconductor laser for biomedical imaging. MEMS-based sources present numerous advantages over the ones based on polygon-scanners. Their non-linearity is however an important drawback for the development of medical applications such as optical coherence tomography where video rate imaging is of great importance. The device we propose overcomes this problem. Its in-plane design enables the push-pull configuration resulting in a linear behavior. Experimental results demonstrate the linearity of the spectral sweep for frequencies up to 30 kHz. The laser, centered at 1310 nm, was tuned over more than 20 nm.