Development of an EO/IR Common Aperture Modular Multifunction Sensor

The goal of this program is to develop and fabricate an ultra-low Size, Weight, and Power (SWAP) integrated electro-optic beam-steering technology that utilizes ultra-fast electro-optic active plasmonic waveguide arrays to achieve very wide scanning angle with diffraction limited beam quality. We develop a very scalable electro-optic plasmonic waveguides array that provides the electro-optic phase shift in sub-wavelength waveguide cross-section in the near-field. plasmonics enable sub-diffraction-limit dimension, allows for ultra-high speed, low power consumption, on-chip integration, and low-unit-cost. The innovative scalable plasmonic array design can steer efficiently the optical beam over wide angle range >1700, while being ultrafast, compact and power efficient, with low loss to the laser beam, the large optical aperture > 1cm allows the device to handle very high laser beam power. Existing beam steering device are bulky, hybrid and cant be integrated on miniature multifunction aperture for EO/IR sensors. The use of novel plasmonic metallic nano-structure waveguide array, with efficient and fast electro-optic material, will enable miniature fast beam-steering devices that have never been done before. The plasmonic beam steering resolution and scalability will be able to generate diffraction limited beam that could match the beam quality of steering mirrors.