A new fabrication method for enhancing the yield of linear micromirror arrays assisted by temporary anchors

As one of the most common spatial light modulators,linear micromirror arrays(MMAs)based on microelectromechanical system(MEMS)processes are currently utilized in many fields.However,two crucial challenges exist in the fabrication of such devices:the adhesion of silicon microstructures caused by anodic bonding and the destruction of the suspended silicon film due to residual stress.To solve these issues,an innovative processing method assisted by temporary anchors is presented.This approach effectively reduces the span of silicon microstructures and improves the Euler buckling limit of the silicon film.Importantly,these temporary anchors are strategically placed within the primary etching areas,enabling easy removal without additional processing steps.As a result,we successfully achieved wafer-level,high-yield manufacturing of linear MMAs with a filling factor as high as 95.1%.Demonstrating superior capabilities to those of original MMAs,our enhanced version boasts a total of 60 linear micromirror elements,each featuring a length-to-width ratio of 52.6,and the entire optical aperture measures 5 mm×6 mm.The linear MMA exhibits an optical deflection angle of 20.4°at 110 Vdc while maintaining exceptional deflection flatness and uniformity.This study offers a viable approach for the design and fabrication of thin-film MEMS devices with high yields,and the proposed MMA is promising as a replacement for digital micromirror devices(DMDs,by TI Corp.)in fields such as spectral imaging and optical communication.

DMD-based hyperspectra I microscopy with flexible multiline parallel scanning

As one of the most common hyperspearal microscopy(HSM)techniques,line-scanning HSM is currently utilized in many fields.However,its scanning efficiency is still considered to be inadequate since many biological and chemical processes occur too rapidly to be captured.Accordingly,in this work,a digital micromirror device(DMD)based on microelectromechanical systems(MEMS)is utilized to demonstrate a flexible multiline scanning HSM system.To the best of our knowledge,this is the first line-scanning HSM system in which the number of scanning lines N can be tuned by simply changing the DMD's parallel scanning units according to diverse applications.This brilliant strategy of effortless adjustability relies only on on-chip scanning methods and totally exploits the benefits of parallelization,aiming to achieve nearly an A/-time improvement in the detection efficiency and an N-time decrease in the scanning time and data volume compared with the single-line method under the same operating conditions.To validate this,we selected a few samples of different spectral wavebands to perform reflection imaging,transmission imaging,and fluorescence imaging with varying numbers of scanning lines.The results show the great potential of our DMD-based HSM system for the rapid development of cellular biology,material analysis,and so on.In addition,its on-chip scanning process eliminates the inherent microscopic architecture,making the whole system compact,lightweight,portable,and not subject to site constraints.