Design and analysis of a novel tunable optical filter

Abstract

In this paper, an improved design of a tunable optical filter device which is driven by a piezoelectric actuator is proposed. The device can be used either as a tunable optical filter for discrete wavelength alignment or as a dynamic optical filter. The tunable filter is electrostatically driven and consists of three main parts: The electromechanical stage, the suspension and the thin film optical filter. The electromechanical stage and the suspension were designed using graph presentation methods, studied numerically using the finite element method (FEM). The thin film optical filter was designed by a thin film design software. The electromechanical stage was integrated with the suspension and tested as an angular driver of thin-film tilt interference filter for dense-wavelength division demultiplexing system applications.