A Large-Size MEMS Scanning Mirror for Speckle Reduction Application

Based on microelectronic mechanical system (MEMS) processing, a large-size 2-D scanning mirror (6.5 mm in diameter) driven by electromagnetic force was designed and implemented in this paper. We fabricated the micromirror with a silicon wafer and selectively electroplated Ni film on the back of the mirror. The nickel film was magnetized in the magnetic field produced by external current coils, and created the force to drive the mirror's angular deflection. This electromagnetically actuated micromirror effectively eliminates the ohmic heat and power loss on the mirror plate, which always occurs in the other types of electromagnetic micromirrors with the coil on the mirror plate. The resonant frequency for the scanning mirror is 674 Hz along the slow axis, and 1870 Hz along the fast axis. Furthermore, the scanning angles could achieve +/- 4.5 degrees for the slow axis with 13.2 mW power consumption, and +/- 7.6 degrees for the fast axis with 43.3 mW power consumption. The application of the MEMS mirror to a laser display system effectively reduces the laser speckle. With 2-D scanning of the MEMS mirror, the speckle contrast can be reduced from 18.19% to 4.58%. We demonstrated that the image quality of a laser display system could be greatly improved by the MEMS mirror.