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We have designed and fabricated deformable diffractive MEMS grating to be used as tuning elements for external cavity lasers. The resulting device is compact, has wide tunability and a high operating speed.
The initial design is a planar grating where the beams are free-standing and attached to each other using leaf springs. Actuation is achieved through two electrostatic comb drives at either end of the grating. To prevent deformation of the free-standing grating, the device is 10 μm thick made from a Silicon on Insulator (SOI) wafer in a single mask process.
At 100V a periodicity tuning of 3% has been measured. The first resonant mode of the grating is measured at 13.8 kHz, allowing high speed actuation. This combination of wide tunability and high operating speed represents state of the art in the domain of tunable MEMS filters.
In order to improve diffraction efficiency and to expand the usable wavelength range, a blazed version of the deformable MEMS grating has been designed. A key issue is maintaining the mechanical properties of the original device while providing optically smooth blazed beams. Using a process based on anisotropic KOH etching, blazed gratings have been obtained and preliminary characterization is promising.
The actuation of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) in conductive liquids is also investigated. An analysis of the equivalent electrical circuits of immersed DEAs shows that non-overlapping regions of the electrodes should be minimized. It also provides guidelines to determine when the electrodes should be passivated. The effects of immersion in a conductive liquid are assessed by measuring the actuation strain and capacitance over periodic actuation. The experimental results show no sign of liquid-induced degradation over more than 45k actuation cycles.
This will count as one of your downloads.
You will have access to both the presentation and article (if available).
This course will provide attendees with a basic working knowledge of how to design MEMS for reliability. The course will concentrate on MEMS design, reliability physics, MEMS-specific fundamental reliability phenomena and failure modes, and accelerated testing protocols. Practical and useful examples from various arenas of MEMS application will be provided.
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