Piezoelectric driven MEMS scanner

The development of Piezo MEMS has been advanced at ISIT in recent years.

Fraunhofer ISIT designs and manufactures different 1D and 2D micromirrors and the corresponding position sensors. While the 1D PZT micromirrors achieve very large optical scan angles (up to 106°) and have wide frequency ranges (quasi-static up to 69 kHz), the 2D micromirrors are suitable for Lissajous, raster and circular scanners. In addition, translational motions with large amplitudes (up to 1600 µm) were also realized by the PZT micromirrors. Position sensing of the micromirrors was enabled by capacitive piezoelectric sensing elements and metallic strain gauges, and these provide measurement signals with high resolution up to 14 bits.

The newly developed piezoelectric material AlScN with a high scandium content is suitable as an excellent drive material because, in addition to the high drive force, it also has good mechanical linearity and long-term stability. Based on this, various 2D quasi-static micromirrors with large deflection angles, short response time and highly mechanical robustness are being developed. In addition, Fraunhofer ISIT has production-ready equipment for such MEMS mirrors, so that the research results can be transferred to small series production at the same location together with customers and partners.