Surface-micromachined photonic integrated circuits

Abstract

Summary form only given. Surface-micromachining technology offers many advantages for implementing optical MEMS. It is versatile; many different types of optical MEMS devices can be fabricated by the same process. This enables monolithic integration of an entire free-space optical system onto a single chip. In the past several years, we have shown that refractive and diffractive microlenses, micropositioners with multiple degrees of freedom (e.g., rotary or XYZ stages), and precision microactuators can be fabricated by standard three-layer polysilicon surface-micromachining processes.