Magnetically-actuated variable optical attenuators using ferrofluid-doped elastomer implemented by combination of soft lithography and inkjet printing technologies

Author

de Pedro, Sandra ; Cadarso, Victor J. ; Munoz-Berbel, Xavier ; Plaza, J.A. ; Sort, J. ; Brugger, Juergen ; Buttgenbach, Stephanus ; Llobera, Andreu

Author_Institution

CNM-IMB-CSIC, Esfera UAB, Bellaterra, Spain

fYear

2013

fDate

20-24 Jan. 2013

Firstpage

548

Lastpage

551

Abstract

This paper reports the implementation of magnetic variable optical attenuators (M-VOA) by soft lithography (SLT) and using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as constituent material. Two different fabrication protocols are used and compared. In the first case, a two-layer structure containing a clean PDMS layer on a magnetic PDMS (M-PDMS) layer is fabricated by SLT. M-PDMS is obtained by doping clean PDMS with different ferrofluid (FF) amounts. The second protocol consists of selectively dispensing droplets of FF by the inkjet printing technique (IPT) on a clean and non-cured PDMS structure previously defined by SLT. The optical and mechanical properties of structures fabricated using both protocols and containing similar ferrofluid amounts are compared.

Keywords

ink jet printing; magnetic actuators; magnetic fluids; micro-optomechanical devices; optical attenuators; soft lithography; PDMS constituent material; clean PDMS layer; clean PDMS structure; doping; droplets; fabrication protocols; ferrofluid amounts; ferrofluid-doped elastomer; inkjet printing technology; magnetic PDMS layer; magnetic variable optical attenuators; magnetically-actuated variable optical attenuators; mechanical properties; noncured PDMS structure; optical properties; polydimethylsiloxane; soft lithography; two-layer structure; Magnetic fields; Optical device fabrication; Optical losses; Optical saturation; Optical sensors; Optical waveguides; Protocols;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS), 2013 IEEE 26th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Taipei

ISSN

1084-6999

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-5654-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MEMSYS.2013.6474300

Filename

6474300