Integration of active materials with silicon micromachining: Applications to optical MEMS

Most of the MOEMS including optical switches and micro optical benches are developed on silicon. As for the MEMS, the main reason is that silicon has consistently been the material of choice for the microelectronics industry, due to a mature processing technology which offers the possibility to integrate MEMS devices with Integrated Circuits in a low cost batch fabrication process. However, since the beginning of Optoelectronic, silicon has been suffering from its poor efficiency to emit light because of its indirect band gap. Optical active devices can be integrated on silicon by combining specific active materials in order to keep the main advantage of silicon micromachining for MOEMS applications. This paper illustrates this purpose through one project developed in the frame of the LIMMS, joint laboratory between France and Japan. This project deals with optical active devices for which silicon micromachining technology has been employed to fabricate an organic semiconductors based light emitted diode on silicon substrate.