SBIR Phase I: MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) Wavefront Correction Device for Ophthalmic Adaptive Optics

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to design and deliver a low cost, MEMS- based wavefront correction device for use in ophthalmic adaptive optics systems. The use of adaptive optics in ophthalmics shows great promise, but the lack of suitable cost-effective solutions has hindered the advance of research and the development of associated commercial markets. MEMX will leverage the most sophisticated surface micromachining technology available today to design and deliver, for the first time, a MEMS wavefront correction chip that addresses all of the requirements specified by the vision science community. In this project, a number of design concepts will be created and fully analyzed, after which a baseline design will be fabricated and tested against ophthalmic requirements. The main commercial application of this project is in the area of ophthalmic devices and instrumentation. Additional applications would include optical coherence tomography, confocal microscopy, portable military imaging systems, free space optical communication systems, and semiconductor lithography.