Patent ID: 6950227

Claim:
An optical switching device operating in transmission for manipulating an incident light wave or light waves (B) passing through said device, comprising at least a first transparent electrode structure (ES 1 ) comprising one or more electrode zone/s having an effective total area A 1 and arranged in a manner that said electrode zone/s is/are capable of receiving voltage or voltages, a second transparent electrode structure (ES 2 ) comprising one or more separate electrode zone/s having effective total area A 2 and arranged in a manner that said electrode zone/s is/are capable of receiving voltage or voltages, and a layer of dielectric and transparent viscoelastic material (G) located between said first (ES 1 ) and said second (ES 2 ) electrode structures capable of being deformed in local thickness in response to electric field/s generated by said first (ES 1 ) and said second (ES 2 ) electrode structures and said electric field/s passing through said viscoelastic material (G), wherein said first (ES 1 ) and said second (ES 2 ) electrode structures are arranged in a manner that the effective total area A 1 of said first electrode structure (ES 1 ) is substantially larger than the effective total area A 2 of said second electrode structure (ES 2 ), and within the area corresponding substantially to the projection of said area A 2 to said area A 1 , the thickness of the layer of the viscoelastic material (G) can be electrically altered maintaining the thickness of said layer in different parts of said projection area substantially equal in order to realize an electrically controlled variable thickness plate ( 30 ), so that said variable thickness plate ( 30 ) is suitable for altering the optical path length of the transmitted light (B) in order to perform optical switching based on interferometry.