Repeatability study of an electrothermally actuated micromirror

With their large scan range and low drive voltages, electrothermally-actuated micromirrors have great potential in optical biomedical imaging applications, but the repeatability and reliability of such micromirrors are not well understood. This paper reports the conditions for achieving repeatability of the embedded resistive heater and the mirror tilt angle of an electrothermal bimorph micromirror. The upper limit of the actuation voltage that does not degrade the embedded heater performance has been established.