Design and realisation of a MEMS based variable optical attenuator

The MEMS variable optical attenuator (VOA) presented in this work is an electrostatically controlled, surface micro-machined device. The device is designed, fabricated and optically characterized. The dimension of the device is designed to achieve maximum performance using COVENTORWARE software. A successful fabrication procedure is developed and used to realize the VOA. A releasing process is developed to release the device by using low surface tension liquids and rapid thermal annealing (RTA). The achieved process yield is over 90%. Several devices were tested and attenuation up to 5.6 dB was experimentally observed.