A dual-axis pointing mirror with moving-magnet actuation

A large-aperture and large-angle MEMS-based 2D pointing mirror is presented. The device is electromagnetically actuated by a moving-magnet/stationary-coil pair and potentially suited for high power laser beam shaping and beam pointing applications, such as LIDAR. The 4×4 mm2 mirror, the radially symmetric compliant membrane, and the off-the-shelf permanent magnet are manually assembled, with the planar coil kept at a well-defined vertical distance from the permanent magnet by simple alignment pins. The mirror and the compliant membrane structures are separately microfabricated on bulk silicon and SOI wafers, respectively. The hybrid integration of microfabricated and off-the-shelf components enable low-risk/high-yield fabrication, while limiting the throughput. The device features minimum inter-axis cross coupling and good linearity and is highly immune to alignment and assembly imperfections, thanks to the robust actuation principle. All the components including the bi-axial electromagnetic actuator provide a device footprint as small as the top mirror, allowing the design to be used in compact and high-fill-factor mirror arrays. With a drive coil of 400 mA and 5.12 W drive power, the total uniaxial dc rotation exceeds ±16° (optical) for both axes with good decoupling. At maximum measured angle (biaxial 10° (mechanical)), a position stability better than 0.05° over 7 h, and a position repeatability of 0.04° over 5000 switching cycles is reported. Thermally, the simulated mirror temperature increases to 64 K above the heat sink temperature with a thermal in-flux of 1 kW m−2, under absolute vacuum.