Patent ID: 6947657

Claim:
A variable optical attenuator comprising: a reflective tilted mirror connected with a flexure spring which is support by a post anchored onto a substrate; an actuator for driving said tilted mirror to an actuated position away from the initial rest position, wherein this mirror movement including rotational mirror deflection and parallel mirror shifted displacement; a flexure spring for holding said tilted mirror at one side and can be deformed to let said tilted mirror to exhibit movement including rotational mirror deflection and parallel mirror shifted displacement; optics and fibers of input and output ports to be aligned, arranged, and assembled with said tilted mirror onto said substrate in a two dimensional optical light path arrangement; wherein said tilted mirror is driven by said actuator to reflect incident light beam toward a direction corresponding to particular actuated mirror position; and the uncoupled reflected light beam to output port is the attenuated light, while the value of attenuation is contributed by the coupling loss, and is determined by said particular actuated mirror position.