Piezo-electrically Actuated Micro Corner Cube Retroreflector (CCR) for Free-space Optical Communication Applications

Title & Authors
Piezo-electrically Actuated Micro Corner Cube Retroreflector (CCR) for Free-space Optical Communication Applications
Lee, Duk-Hyun; Park, Jae-Y.;

Abstract
In this paper, an extremely low voltage operated micro corner cube retroreflector (CCR) was fabricated for free-space optical communication applications by using bulk silicon micromachining technologies. The CCR was comprised of an orthogonal vertical mirror and a horizontal actuated mirror. For low voltage operation, the horizontal actuated mirror was designed with two PZT cantilever actuators, torsional bars, hinges, and a mirror plate with a size of $\small{400{\mu}m{\times}400{\mu}m}$. In particular, the torsional bars and hinges were carefully simulated and designed to secure the flatness of the mirror plate by using a finite element method (FEM) simulator. The measured tilting angle was approximately $\small{2^{\circ}}$ at the applied voltage of 5 V. An orthogonal vertical mirror with an extremely smooth surface texture was fabricated using KOH wet etching and a double-SOI (silicon-on-insulator) wafer with a (110) silicon wafer. The fabricated orthogonal vertical mirror was comprised of four pairs of two mutually orthogonal flat mirrors with $\small{400{\mu}m4}$ (length) $\small{\times400{\mu}m}$ (height) $\small{\times30{\mu}m}$ (thickness). The cross angles and surface roughness of the orthogonal vertical mirror were orthogonal, almost $\small{90^{\circ}}$ and 3.523 nm rms, respectively. The proposed CCR was completed by combining the orthogonal vertical and horizontal actuated mirrors. Data transmission and modulation at a frequency of 10 Hz was successfully demonstrated using the fabricated CCR at a distance of approximately 50 cm.
Keywords
MEMS;Orthogonal mirror;Corner cube retroreflector (CCR);Vertical silicon mirror;Piezoelectric actuation;Cantilever;Optical communication;
Language
English
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