Peng [1] is on to something. This person has gone and found a use for cantilever beam based waveguides beyond the simple switch. Apparently, if you try hard enough, you can succeed.
Peng used two different oxide claddings (a BOX lower cladding and a PECVD upper cladding) in order to deflect an embedded tapered waveguide into off-axis alignment with a fiber.

According to Peng, by using these stress-deflected cantilevers, lensed fibers with large conical angles can then be use to couple light onto a silicon PIC without requiring cleaving.

Miraculous!

But since this work does not involve quantum optics, excitons, or surface plasmon resonance, this work is obvious and just an exercise in engineering...or is it?

Someone needs to tell Peng that design is important. That black SEM boarder is unacceptable!

1. Peng Sun and Ronald M. Reano, “Cantilever couplers for intra-chip coupling to silicon photonic integrated circuits,” Optics Express 17, no. 6 (March 16, 2009): 4565-4574, doi:10.1364/OE.17.004565.