Random Access Addressing of MEMS Electrostatic Shutter Array for Multi-Object Astronomical Spectroscopy

Abstract

An extended version of cross-bar type addressing technique is developed for three-port electrostatic micro shutters arranged in an arrayed format. A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) shutter blade suspended by a pair of torsion beams works as a movable electrode that is either attracted upwards to the cover plate to close the aperture or retracted downwards into the through-hole to open it. Tri-state positioning of the shutter—i.e., open, rest, and close—is controlled by the hysteresis loop of the electrostatic pull-in and release behavior using the combination of the voltages applied to the shutter, the cover, and the substrate. Random access addressing of the shutters is demonstrated by a control system composed of MATLAB-coded Arduino electronics. The shutter array developed in this work is for a sub-cluster of a reconfigurable shutter array under development for a multi-object galactic astronomy.

An Electromagnetic-Driven Microshutter Array in a Field-of-View Gated Image System for All-Time Star Sensors

“…The team’s newly developed NexGen Micro-Shutter Array (NGMSA) technology [ 18 ] intends to achieve a larger array format in order to meet the requirements of larger FOV for future telescopes in space. A similar microshutter array based on electrostatic actuation is developed for a ground-based infrared telescope at the Tokyo Atacama Observatory on a 5640-m-high mountain in Chile [ 19 ]. A trial sub-cluster microshutter array with 40 × 10 elements has been fabricated in a 20 mm × 20 mm area, with a shutter blade size of 100 μm × 1000 μm.…”

Study of Residual Stress Compensation in Continuous Membrane Micromirrors Based on Surface Micromachining Processes

“…According to the analysis, various methods have been proposed to solve these problems. One of the methods is to use zero stress materials, such as the single crystalline silicon substrate of bulk micromachining [15] or the single crystalline silicon layer of SOI technology [16,17]. This method can essentially solve the problem, but it is only available for specific processes and devices.…”