Applications of SOI-based optical MEMS

摘要

After microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices have been wellnestablished, components of higher complexity are now developed.nParticularly, the combination with optical components has been verynsuccessful and have led to optical MEMS. The technology of choice for usnis the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, which has also beennsuccessfully used by other groups. The applications presented here givenan overview over what is possible with this technology. In particular,nwe demonstrate four completely different devices: (a) a 2 × 2noptical cross connector (OXC)with an insertion loss of about 0.4 dB at answitching time of 500 Μs and its extension to a 4 × 4 OXC, (b)na variable optical attenuators (VOA), which has an attenuation range ofnmore than 50 dB (c) a Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) with anspectral resolution of 6 nm in the visible, and (d) an accelerometernwith optical readout that achieves a linear dynamic range of 40 dB overn±6 g. Except for the FTS, all the applications utilized opticalnfibers, which are held and self-aligned within the MEMS component bynU-grooves and small leaf springs. All devices show high reliability andna very low power consumption