Manufacturability analysis of assembled FT microspectrometer

This paper presents a new method that evaluates the manufacturability of microoptical systems. A statistical, kinematic link model is applied to compute the deviations of optical paths due to the positional and angular misalignments of optical components. The deviation of optical paths is a main source that deteriorates the performance of an optical system, hence it is very important to quantify how misalignments accumulate and propagate from one component to another. This method was applied to evaluate the optical performance of an assembled, chip-scale Fourier Transform (FT) microspectrometer. The microspectrometer was prototyped by using the microassembly of heterogeneous optical components. The statistical model computes the optical paths of two beams that travel through an input fiber, a beam splitter, moving and fixed mirrors, and a detector. Its results were used to determine the tolerance budgets for the fabrication and assembly processes of micro optical components.