Advances in laser beam micro forming for micropositioning

The increasing demands in MEMS fabrication in the past led to new requirements in production technology for these devices. Especially the packaging and assembly of optical devices like high power diode lasers require high accuracy in positioning and high reproducibility in combination with low production costs. Conventional assembly technology and mechanical adjustment methods are time consuming and exspensive. Therefore a need of new assembly procedures arose. Each component of the system has to be positioned and fixed. The decreasing dimensions of the microsystems cause problems in assembly and increase dramatically the tolerance conditions. The laser beam micro forming as a non-contact tool offers the possibility of active adjustment after the assembly is completed. This paper describes this new technology pointing out the used mechanisms of laser induced deformation: From the basic mechanisms dedicated structures are derived to achieve the desired degrees of freedom for the adjustment process. The knowledge transfer to a tube-like actuator will be demonstrated. The tilting of a face surface of the structure mirror in two rotational movements will be shown. The results are proven using a Michelson interferometer. The accuracy has been drastically increased. The results to be presented have partially been achieved within the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 440 “Assembly of Hybrid Microsystems” financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG.