Current Issue The International Reference for Chip-Scale Electronics, Flip-Chip Technology, Optoelectronic Interconnection and Wafer-Level Packaging October 2002 Email the editor

For MOEMS applications requiring micro-optical systems, Xerox has integrated miniature laser diodes and optics on an integrated circuit through a flip-chip bonding technique developed by Decai Sun and Michel Rosa at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The chip shown in this colorized scanning electron micrograph image is only 1000 microns wide and contains the laser diode in the center and the collimating lens on the right. (Xerox Corp.)

Xerox Scientists Are Exploring Ways to Reduce Cost of MOEMS

Webster, N.Y.-Xerox scientists are researching ways to fabricate MOEMS at a lower cost while improving accuracy for new optical switching applications in telecom and industrial automation.

Xerox's Joel Kubby of the Wilson Center is developing new applications for the tiny micro-electronic devices known as MOEMS, as well as better methods of fabricating the devices. The new MOEMS should be useful not only in printers and copiers, but also in industrial automation and in optical switching for telecom applications.

"A photoreceptor belt can vibrate like a taut rubber band," said Kubby. Instead of trying to hold the belt steady for printers and copiers while the four colors comprising the image are laid down, scientists are investigating the use of MOEMS to detect the exact position of the belt and then to accommodate its movement by steering the laser beam to that position.

Intelligent MOEMS

MOEMS contain intelligence that allows them to optically sense and then control activities around them by generating, modulating, guiding, switching and detecting light.

"MOEMS will replace precision manufacturing with closed-loop feedback control," Kubby observed. "The result will be much more precise registration, which will give customers even better image quality at lower cost."

Xerox is the lead partner in the MOEMS Manufacturing Consortium-a $14 million advanced technology program administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-to develop a broadly enabling fabrication process for MOEMS. [xerox.com]