Design and Feasibility Evaluation of WGPs Chip as a Physical Force Sensor

Wire grid polarizers (WGPs) are composed of 1-D nanoscale periodic structures and are widely used in liquid crystal display devices to enhance brightness and improve the utilization rate of the backlight source. This letter proposes a new design of a WGPs chip, which can be used in a physical force sensor. In this way, the WGPs can fabricate on many types of microstructure, such as cantilever beam, thin film, and bridge. Then, infrared light was served as the signal source, and illuminated WGPs chip with the optimum angle. When a physical force is applied to the microstructure, the incident angle of infrared light will be varied, resulting in different transmission signal output. As a result, this system can be used for designing the physical force-measuring module operated by optical contactless sensing approach. Furthermore, the WGPs structure introduced in this letter was defined by laser interference lithography and deposited Al by E-beam evaporation.