A Flexible Nanograting Integrated Onto Silicon Micromachines by Soft Lithographic Replica Molding and Assembly

We report a new elastomer-silicon hybrid photonic microelectromechanical systems device incorporating a soft lithographically patterned and assembled tunable elastic grating that can be strained by on-chip silicon microactuators at high speed. The fabrication of this optical device involves an innovative process that allows the integration of polymer and silicon structures on the microscale with the inclusion of nanometer features. The nanograting is capable of varying its grating period over 13% at actuation bandwidth of 2 kHz. The unique structure is modeled theoretically and compared to experimental results. Further experimental characterization determines the device´s ability to be used in combination with a single point detector for high speed, highly sensitive spectroscopic measurements. The spectroscopic detection of varying multiwavelength signals is demonstrated with the use of our device and a single detector. This demonstrated capability makes this particular device ideal for rapid detection of weak fluorescence in demand for several bioassay applications.