Mach-Zehnder MEMS interferometer with two Si/Air beam splitters

Author

Omran, Haitham ; Medhat, Mostafa ; Saadany, Bassam ; Khalil, Diaa

Author_Institution

Fac. of Eng., Ain Shams Univ., Cairo, Egypt

fYear

2009

fDate

15-17 Nov. 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

In this work we present a novel MEMS interferometer based on the Mach-Zehnder (MZ) architecture. The interferometer is fabricated by deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) technology on an SOI wafer. The new structure is based on the use of two Si/Air beam splitters and two metallic mirrors, integrated with a comb drive actuator on a single die. The whole structure is integrated on one chip and no parts are assembled from outside the structure. By moving the mirrors using the integrated comb drive actuator, the structure is tested as an FTIR spectrometer. The two wavelengths 1525 nm and 1575 nm have been successfully identified using it.

Keywords

Fourier transform spectrometers; Mach-Zehnder interferometers; microactuators; micromirrors; optical beam splitters; sputter etching; FTIR spectrometer; MEMS interferometer; Mach-Zehnder interferometer; Si-air beam splitters; comb drive actuator; deep reactive ion etching; metallic mirrors; Actuators; Assembly; Biomedical optical imaging; Interferometric lithography; Micromechanical devices; Mirrors; Optical interferometry; Optical noise; Particle beam optics; Signal to noise ratio; DRIE; Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometry; Mach-Zehnder interferometer; SOI;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Design and Test Workshop (IDT), 2009 4th International

Conference_Location

Riyadh

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5748-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IDT.2009.5404129

Filename

5404129