M icromachining technology opens up many new opportunities for optical and optoelectronic systems.
Movable structures and microactuators can now be monolithically integrated with optical and optoelectronic devices. Sub-millisecond switching time has been demonstrated. A single-chip optical disk pickup head and a femtosecond optical autocorrelator have been demonstrated. Another area of interest is mode-locking of semiconductor lasers. The repetition frequency of these lasers range from 10 GHz to over 1 THz.