A drive comb-drive actuator with large, stable deflection range for use as an optical shutter

A comb-drive actuator has been developed with new features that increase the static deflection range to 175 /spl mu/m without sacrificing die area or switching speed. An optical shutter for a tunable laser has been made by attaching a large-deflection actuator and mirror to opposite ends of a pivoting lever. A 2.5:1 lever ratio allows the smaller mass of the mirror to balance the relatively large actuator mass to reduce vibration sensitivity. The shutter routinely achieves over 50 dB attenuation in production laser modules, with a switching speed of less than 1 ms. A bidirectional actuator with similar design features has 350 /spl mu/m of total travel with less than 3% nonlinearity.