A novel electrostatically driven bulk-micromachined on-off optical switch

In this paper, a novel bulk micromachined on-off optical switch is proposed with the techniques of silicon-glass wafer bonding and deep reactive ion etching. The micromechanical optical switch includes a slope anchor and a beam with a shutter, in which the beam is laterally driven by an electrostatic actuator. It is important to design and optimize the slope anchor to produce a large shutter displacement with low driving voltage. FEM simulation with ANSY 5.5 is made to analyze the dynamic behavior of the switch. Meanwhile, the pull-in voltage is achieved by using the solution of Intellisute 4.0, from that the frequency shift is obtained. The optimization offers a reasonable design for the optical switch array based on the present fabrication technology.