A micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) infrared (IR) emitter is presented. The IR emitters are fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer,and the resistance heating film on the SOI wafer used boron-doped polysilicon by ion implantation technology. The single crystal silicon on SOI wafer is designed as a heavily-doped infrared absorption layer for realizing the self-heating effect. The light-emitting layer is fabricated by using deep reactive ion etching(DRIE)process on the backside of SOI wafer,and the buried SiO2 layer of the SOI wafer is used as etching stop layer to control the thickness of light-emitting layer. The surface temperature and emission spectrum of IR emitter are measured by thermal imaging system and spectroradiometer. The experimental results show that in the case of surface temperature of about 700 K,the energy conversion efficiency is about 5.58% in the spectrum range of 1.3-14.5 μm. The experiments also show that the modulation frequency can reach to 40 Hz at 50% modulation depth.