Pneumatic control of a liquid-core/liquid-cladding waveguide as the basis for an optofluidic switch

Abstract

We have developed a 2 x 3 optofluidic switch based on the pneumatic control of a liquid-core/liquid-cladding (L(2)) waveguide using monolithic microvalves in a multilayer poly(dimethylsiloxane) microfluidic device. In the proposed system, the incident beam to be coupled to the L(2) waveguide and the flow direction of the L(2) waveguide can be varied by the pneumatic actuation of the monolithic microvalves in the upstream and downstream regions, respectively. The time required for the transitions between different states of the optofluidic switch (t(R)) was about 30 ms. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3535979]