Thermo-optic silicon photonics with low power and extreme resilience to over-drive

Operating power of silicon photonic thermo-optic tuners and switches using undercut is inversely proportional to response time. Aggressively undercut devices have 23x power reduction and excellent ruggedness, with reversible behavior up to 60x operating power, and rapid failure when the core temperature reaches a remarkably high 1500°C. Hence device length can be greatly reduced.