Design, fabrication and characterization of piezoelectrically actuated gimbal-mounted 2D micromirrors

This paper reports design, fabrication and characterization of piezoelectric gimbal-mounted 2D micromirrors. The novelty of this device is the technology achievement of realizing an integrated micromirror at small chip size, which enables 2D scanning and a very large resonance frequency difference between the two axes. In consequence the slow axis can be actuated quasi-statically, while the fast axis is operated resonantly, which makes the micromirror suitable for raster scanning. The fabricated devices possess two perpendicular axes with respective resonant frequencies of 23.9 kHz and 1.5 kHz. At resonant actuation these micromirrors achieve total optical scan angles of 21.4° and 31.3° about x and y axis, while at quasistatic actuation the slow axis achieves a total scan angle of 13.7°. According to the recent measurement results, approaches for improving the scan angles have been proposed and carried out.