Are diffractive MEMS devices reliable?
A. Silicon Light Machines’ diffractive MEMS are extremely reliable. The ribbons’ total range of motion is very small (~0.2 micrometers), and there are no points of contact between moving parts. In addition, the GLV device can remain stable over a long period of exposure to high power laser illumination. We have tested our MEMS devices for over a trillion cycles, and we could not measure any onset of fatigue. Q. How does the GLV device differ from tilting mirror MEMS? A. In many tilting mirror designs, the MEMS device is etched out of a silicon substrate, leaving a raised mirror on a bearing surface. The movement and positioning of the mirror may require precise control electronics and accurate feedback mechanisms. In operation, this type of device will “sweep” light at constant amplitude from the source to the destination fiber. In other words, the light amplitude is constant; the output angle is variable. In contrast, the GLV device is an addressable diffraction grating that can serve
