Development of an optical beam manipulator based on micromachine technologies

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The purpose of this research is to fabricate micro miniature optomechanical devices for switching, chopping, directing and scanning optical beams by IC-based micromachining technology. We have built micro optomechanical devices composed of chopping plates, micromirrors and microactuators. Semiconductor technologies such as photolithograph and etching were utilized to realize many microstructures which were more than 100mum in height and had accuracy of 1mum. One device is an optical chopper composed of a chopping plate with slits and piezoelectric actuators to drive the plate. Another device is a matrix optical beam switch composed of arrays of micromirrors ; each mirror is suspended by thin and long tortioal beams and can be bent 90 degrees by electrostatic force.Following results have been obtained :(1) A single cristal quartz substrate was anisotropically etched to build a actuator which produces displacement over 100mum in resonance at 2.7 kHz. The actuator was successfully applied to an optical beam chopper. Another type of actuator produced 50-100 mum static displacement at the end plate when the multi-folded suspention attached to the plate was in resonant vibration at very high resonant mode. The actuator was applied to an optical ON-OFF switch.(2) Arrays of micromirrors were fabricated on silicon substrate. Each mirror was suspended by two tortion bars and it could be bent as much as 90 degrees by electrostatic force. Directions of optical beams from collimated beam fibers were changed by inserting micromirrors at certain locations. A matrix optical switch was realized by using the device ; the insertion loss was 9.6 dB and ON-OFF ration and cross talks were less than -60 dB.