A detailed quantitative overview on different micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) smart glass technologies and smart glass technologies in general is given. Next, our MEMS smart glass is focused. This technology based on millions of miniaturized, tiltable, planar mirrors. Installed in windows or building facades, it allows personalized daylight steering as well as thermal and energy management in buildings via electrostatic actuation, strongly supports health and has a large potential for reducing CO2 emissions and energy consumption of buildings, noticeably. Various results of experimental characterizations and reliability studies are summarized. Simulations of light steering are reported for different use cases involving tailored variable tilt angles of the mirrors. Ray tracing is used to visualize light steering and distribution in a model room, showing that our MEMS smart glass can generate high illuminance where necessary in workspaces. Finally, simulations of energy savings are presented using hourly resolved real weather data over up to 10 years, varying cloud coverage, daytime and seasonal varying irradiance via varying sun orbit, respective geo coordinates of different locations, energy price and others. Simulation results are depicted for four German and two international cities, varying in latitude and elevation. Huge energy saving potential of our MEMS smart glass and amortization of investment in MEMS smart glass within less than five years in the best case is reported compared to conventional window blind systems.

We present a MEMS array-based approach for micro-irises called “ring shutter”, utilizing subfield addressing for applications in advanced micro-optics, such as interference microscopy. This experimental study is focused on investigating the homogeneity of electro-mechanical and optical characteristics within and between subfields of a lab demonstrator device. The characterization aims to ensure crosstalk-free and swift optical performance, as demonstrated in a previous study. For this purpose, the transmission in the initial state, actuation voltages, and response dynamics are measured for each electrode and the entire device, and the results are thoroughly compared. The measurements are conducted by expanding an existing optical actuation setup via tailored 3D-printed apertures, to isolate selected rings and zones. Evaluation of measurement data confirms the stable and crosstalk-free operation of the ring shutter. Both angular and radial homogeneity are robust and follow the expectations in the experiment. While transmission, actuation voltage and closing time slightly rise (up to 25%) with increased radial position represented by five discrete ring sections, the characteristics for different angular zones remain nearly constant. Response times are measured below 40 µs, actuation voltages do not exceed 60 V, and the overall transmission of the ring shutter yields 53.6%.

A ring-shaped optical micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) shutter array, referred to as ring shutter, is implemented in the illumination path of a Linnik coherence scanning interferometer. It acts as a dynamic spatial filter, which is imaged into the pupil plane of the microscope objectives. This filtering process limits the angles of light incident on the sample to a certain range, which, depending on the surface slope, can be exploited to significantly increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the resulting interference signals and, subsequently, the quality of surface reconstruction. The results of conventional interferometric measurements are shown and compared with those of our novel setup to demonstrate a significant effect on the reliability of the surface reconstruction. The data is additionally analyzed in the spatial frequency domain in order to explain the underlying signal formation process.

We present a MEMS-array-based approach for micro irises called “ring shutter”, utilizing subfield addressing for applications in advanced micro-optics such as interference microscopy. The study is focused on investigating the homogeneity of electro-mechanical and optical characteristics within and between subfields of a lab demonstrator device. The characterisation aims to ensure cross-talk-free and swift optical performance demonstrated in a previous study. For this purpose, the transmission in the initial state, actuation voltages, and response dynamics are measured per each electrode as well as for the whole device and thoroughly compared. The measurements are conducted by expanding an existing optical actuation setup via tailored 3D-printed apertures al-lowing the isolation of selected rings and zones. Evaluation of measurement data confirms the stable and cross-talk free operation of the ring shutter. Both angular and radial homogeneity are robust and follow the expectations in the experiment. While transmission, actuation voltage and closing time slightly rise (up to 25%) with increased radial position represented by five ring sec-tions A – E, the characteristics for the three angular zones 1 – 3 remain nearly constant. Response times are measured below 40 µs, actuation voltages do not exceed 60 V, and the overall transmis-sion of the ring shutter yields 53.6%.