Design and fabrication of 45° inclined mirrors for wafer-level optical absorption spectroscopy

The increasing demand for small, robust and low-cost gas sensors triggers the batch fabrication of highly selective and sensitive miniaturized devices. A linear variable optical filter (LVOF) based microspectrometer enables selectivity in a wide wavelength range, while maintaining the robustness and low cost. To achieve sensitivity in an LVOF based absorption spectrometer, a long gas cell is required. In this paper, we propose an on-chip absorption path that also serves as a gas cell, where the light beam is steered using 45° inclined mirrors. The fabrication of 45° inclined mirrors is demonstrated and optical efficiency of the system is analyzed using ray tracing. (paper)