A rotary electrostatic micromotor 1 x 8 optical switch

This paper describes a 1 x 8 rotary electrostatic micromotor optical switch fabricated using high-aspect-ratio micromachining technology to produce si licon or nickel components which are subsequently assembled to form a switc h. The switch consists of a salient-pole micromotor with 1-mm-diameter 200- mu m-thick rotor that supports up to a 500-mu m-tall, 900-mu m-wide mirror, Typical switches were actuated at 50 V, operated for extended periods in r oom air, and found to have a rapid rotation with an average optical switchi ng time between two neighboring fiber ports of 18 ms, Optical testing was p erformed at wavelength of 1310 nm in single- and multimode, and at 850 nm i n multimode, The optical beam was propagated in free space with minimal div ergence through the use of externally mounted collimating gradient-index le nses. With an aluminum coating, the mirror and external optics exhibited an input to output coupling loss as low as 0.96 dB in multimode and 2.32 dB i n single-mode. Interchannel crosstalk was less than -45 dB.