Design of a MEMS Tunable Polymer Grating for Single Detector Spectroscopy

High-speed, highly sensitive, miniature photospectroscopy techniques suited for a microfluidic platform enable rapid, cost-effective and efficient assays for numerous applications. Guided by these application requirements, we designed and demonstrated an innovative tunable diffraction grating implemented for spectroscopic measurements requiring minimal optics and signal processing. The device includes a flexible polymer microbridge with a nanoimprinted grating pattern on the top surface. Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) silicon actuators mechanically strain the microbridge to variably tune the grating period. Our innovative nanophotonic technology incorporating the tunable grating may guide future advancements of wavelength-discriminating detection for the identification and quantification of chemical and biological species.

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