Reliability assessment by virtual prototyping of MEMS tunable Fabry-Perot optical cavity

A concept, virtual prototyping, is proposed. This means to simulate the behaviour of the future product even at the design phase. Based on the concurrent engineering approach, virtual prototyping requires extensive knowledge about the involved failure mechanism and its dependence on technological factors and on the functioning environment. In the paper, virtual prototyping is used for a tunable Fabry-Perot cavity for optical applications, which is a resonant micro cavity composed by two flat, parallel, high quality mirrors, separated by a variable gap. The movable membrane (mirror) is electrostatically actuated. The results demonstrate that the reliability of the device may be monitored even at the design phase by choosing appropriately the structure parameters.