Spatially Modulated Reflective Membranes for High-Dynamic-Range Wavefront Control

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/DEBS) has a requirement for an adaptive secondary mirror to correct the wavefront originating from a large-format primary membrane mirror currently under development. The requirements for this mirror are stringent, calling for large stroke aberration correction to achieve near diffraction limited performance of the entire optical system. In addition, the mirror must operate with a certain bandwidth (as high as 1 kHz), and be capable of handling wavelengths from 400nm to 5 µm. The ongoing Phase I and proposed Phase II SBIR work focuses on developing an adaptive secondary mirror capable of meeting these requirements. During Phase II, we plan to develop and refine the technology that we initiated in Phase I and meet the following objectives: ● Manufacture large format mirrors -10cm ● Achieve 10 micron peak-valley mirror stroke ● Achieve λ/20 residual wave-front error at 532 nm ● Achieve amplitude vs frequency response to meet AFRL PSD requirements ● Increase the number of actuators to 91 or greater (TBD) ● Achieve operation from 400nm to 5 µm