Highly space-efficient electrostatic zigzag transmissive micro-optic switches for an integrated MEMS optical display system

This paper presents likely the world's smallest electrostatic visible light highly space-efficient transmissive micro-optical switches (TMOS) for an integrated MEMS optical display system. Each TMOS represents one pixel with 150 /spl mu/m/spl times/150 /spl mu/m spacing in a display module. It is demonstrated that a zigzag electrostatic actuator of 47 /spl mu/m/spl times/160 /spl mu/m size can achieve a maximum static lateral displacement of 10 /spl mu/m at 38 V. Depending on the zigzag actuator design, these devices have a mechanical resonance frequency of up to 18.6 kHz.