Deformable MEMS grating for wide tunability and high operating speed

Abstract

In optical MEMS, the family of diffractive MEMS is interesting for a wide range of applications, such as displays, scanners or switching elements. Their advantages are compactness, potentially high actuation speed and the ability to deflect light at large angles. A deformable diffraction MEMS grating is presented. Electrostatic actuation has experimentally proven a periodicity tuning of 2.5%. The device first resonant mode is expected to be at 28.5 kHz. The present device has been designed as a tuning element in an external cavity mid-infrared quantum-cascade laser.