Thermo-optical switches

All-optical networking can be the sole approach to provide the huge bandwidth required for future networks. The essential elements in such an optical network are optical switches. A number of options have been proposed in order to implement them efficiently. We focus on thermo-optical switches. First, the physical principles of the thermo-optic effect are briefly introduced, after a description of the most common technologies used for the fabrication of thermo-optic switches is provided, finally the main structures reported in literature are reported and discussed.