A Monolithic Gimbal Micro-Mirror Fabricated and Remotely Tuned with a Femtosecond Laser

Abstract

With the advent of ultrafast lasers, new manufacturing techniques have come into existence. In micromachining, the use of femtosecond lasers not only offers the possibility for three-dimensional monolithic fabrication inside a single optically transparent material, but also a means for remotely, and arbitrarily, deforming substrates with nanometer resolution. Exploiting this principle and combining it with flexure design, we demonstrate a monolithic micro-mirror entirely made with a femtosecond laser and whose orientation is tuned in a non-contact manner by exposing some part of the device to low energy femtosecond pulses. Given the non-contact nature of the process, the alignment can be very precisely controlled with a resolution that is many orders of magnitude better than conventional techniques based on mechanical positioners.

Keywords

• femtosecond laser machining
• non-contact
• tunable optics
• micro-optics
• flexures
• repositioning
• monolithic
• fused silica
• integrated optics