Design and fabrication of a micro-mirror for spectroscopy

A wide variety of MEMS micro-mirrors are being developed for various optical applications. One such application is Fourier Transform Spectrometry (FTS). The design, process optimization and fabrication of a micro-mirror for this application is presented. Large, non-tilting displacements of mirrors are required to achieve high FTS resolution. In order to obtain this without using Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE), the micro-mirrors were fabricated on silicon using bulk micromachining techniques. This paper will present the process developed for fabrication of the mirror with the required specifications. In addition, results of the FTS experiments conducted with the micro-mirror will also be presented. © 2010 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering.