Technology:
Microassembly of
optical structures

Microassembled optical spectrometer.

Note optical fiber entering from left, held down by microassembled clips, ending in ball lens. Light is reflected by the diffraction grating held on the rotary stage and bounced to a mirror in the top left corner, which reflects it to a detector underneath.

Click on image for video of a prototype of this in operation (WMV format, 352KB)

High deflection micromirror.

This prototype of a high-deflection mirror is electrothermally actuated. A clever use of stacked actuators allows this to have very high angle deflections with low voltage. Using controlled overheating during initial erection, the beams can be back-bent to allow the mirror to have static, power-off deflection of 90 degrees from the substrate, and it may be further deflected from there.