An Electro-Statically Driven Display Device Using Evanescent Coupling Between a Sheet Waveguide and Multi-Cantilevers

Abstract

A new structure for display device is proposed and fabricated by MEMS process. The device is based on physical contact and evanescent coupling between a sheet waveguide and electrostatically driven multi-cantilevers. When incident light is propagated into the waveguide and the cantilevers are contacted to the waveguide by applying dc voltage, the switched light is emitted from side-edges of the contacted multi-cantilevers resulting in display device. The device contributes to expansion of switching-area, removal of unnecessary scattered light and high contrast due to the simple fabrication and structure with corner spacers for optical-separation between cantilevers and the waveguide. From experimental result of the device, a contrast of 0.9 is obtained at 170V, and stable drive is realized up to 1kHz. Therefore, the device can be expected to apply to display device by the fabrication of an array structure.