Digitally tunable MOEMS diffraction gratings

Gowri Suresh Vesalapu; Nandita Dasgupta; Shanti Bhattacharya

doi:10.1117/1.JMM.13.1.013001

2 January 2014 Digitally tunable MOEMS diffraction gratings

Gowri Suresh Vesalapu, Nandita Dasgupta, Shanti Bhattacharya

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS, Vol. 13, Issue 1, 013001 (January 2014). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMM.13.1.013001

Abstract

The angles of diffraction of a grating are a function of the incident wavelength and the period of the grating. The ability to vary the period of a grating is of interest in a variety of applications, as this in effect provides tunability of the diffraction angles. Most tunable gratings vary the period in an analog fashion. This is achieved by pulling the grating beams apart, which varies the gap between the beams, and hence the period. Changing the period in this way usually does not alter the width of each beam. Although this provides tunability with a high resolution, the ratio of the width of each grating beam to the period changes for each period. This in turn changes the efficiency for each grating period. In this work, we present a design of a MOEMS grating that changes the period between two values, i.e., from 12 to 24 μm and 48 μm, while keeping the efficiency constant. Electrostatic attraction is used to selectively pull down beams in order to achieve this. Simulation and experimental results show a variation of about 1% in efficiency between the two grating states. The measured efficiencies in the first order of the 24- and 48-μm period gratings were found to be 6.5% and 7% compared to the simulated values of 9% and 10%, respectively. The gratings were fabricated using surface micromachining. The process flow is presented.

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Gowri Suresh Vesalapu, Nandita Dasgupta, and Shanti Bhattacharya "Digitally tunable MOEMS diffraction gratings," Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS 13(1), 013001 (2 January 2014). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMM.13.1.013001

Published: 2 January 2014

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