Monolithic Deformable Membrane Mirror for High Energy Laser Applications

To address the high-speed, low-cost, low-weight, and compact requirements of space- and air-borne high-energy-laser adaptive optical systems, this Phase II program will design, test and fabricate a monolithic, high-energy, membrane-based deformable multi-layer-dielectric mirror using a rigid-plate electrostatic MEMS-actuator array. The actuators will be VLSI-chip driven, and in the program, a six-inch wafer will provide a 100 x 100 array of actuators on 1-mm centers. In particular, the Phase II will focus on the problems of electrostatic MEMS actuator design and fabrication, high-voltage VLSI-MEMS driver chip design and fabrication, prototype modulator assembly, and the high-speed electronic control of the device. The proposed modulator is designed to offer: large stroke (8 µm), low-voltage (~100 V) and low power operation, low weight, scalability to millions of actuators, fast rise time (10 microsecond), electrically-independent actuators, excellent surface figure with 8-bit grayscale phase resolution, high laser power damage threshold, compatibility with system architectures that reduce the computations necessary to compensate wavefront distortion, and low manufacturing cost. Our price/performance goal is 10K actuators with a 10 kHz frame rate for $10K.