Optical characterization of fully programmable MEMS diffraction gratings.

We have fabricated and characterized fully programmable diffraction gratings consisting of 64 silicon micro-mirrors. The mirrors are 700µm long and 50µm wide with a fill factor of 90%. They are actuated electrostatically and move down by 1.25µm while showing negligible cross-talk and bowing as small as 0.14µm over 700µm. Extinction ratio up to 100 has been achieved by adjusting only 3 adjacent micro-mirrors. The gratings could operate either as light modulators up to 5µm or spectra generators up to 2.5µm.