Method of forming small electro-mechanical modulator chips each with a row of flexible light reflecting fingers which may be butted with other like chips to form a full width electro-mechanical array by forming a silicon dioxide layer on a silicon wafer, forming a conductive layer on the silicon dioxide layer, etching away the conductive layer except for discrete rows of fingers, etching the silicon dioxide layer to create a mask delineating a well below the fingers and line openings in the silicon dioxide at the points where the wafer is to be separated into chips, etching the wafer to open the well and form V-shaped grooves along the openings, cutting a groove in the other side of the wafer along a centerline parallel to, but offset from the centerline of each V-shaped shaped groove by an amount sufficient to allow the wafer (111) crystalline plane to extend from the V-shaped groove to the cut groove, and applying a downward force to the wafer to fracture the wafer along along the (111) plane and separate the wafer into chips.