Improvement of switching time in a thermocapillarity optical switch

The switching time of existing thermocapillarity optical switches is about two orders of magnitude larger than that of other optical switches, such as a thermooptics switch and a free-space switch using microelectromechanical system technology. This paper reports a thermocapillarity switch whose swi tching time is comparable to that of the thermooptics and free-space switch es. The greatly improved switching time is achieved by lowering the absolut e viscosity of the refractive-index matching liquid and improving the switc h design.