Review of MEMS-based programmable gratings: Part I

In the last two decades, Microelectromechanical System (MEMS) that is considered as an enabling technology achieves prominent development and great economical success in almost all the engineering and industrial fields, such as mechanical, optical, radio frequency (RF), power, biological, etc. Optical MEMS endows optical devices with the advantages of smaller volume, lighter weight, better performances, lower cost and power consumption. And it makes the key structures of these devices dynamically controllable by exterior forces, which is almost impossible for traditional technologies. In this paper, MEMS-based programmable gratings representing a category of widely studied optical devices are focused on. Characteristics and excellent performances of these gratings are presented. Then, three typical MEMS-based programmable gratings commercially available nowadays are introduced, emphasizing on their operational principles, structural characteristics and potential representative applications.