Bilayer SLM with Independent Amplitude and Phase Control

The goal of the Phase I program is to establish proof-of-concept for a low-cost spatial light modulator that offers independent amplitude and phase control, and that can be used in a wide variety of defense and commercial systems. The proposed device is based on Optron's proprietary transparent silicon active-matrix liquid crystal light modulator technology. The device employs an integrated double-layer high-speed analog liquid crystal cell sandwiched between two transparent active-matrix silicon arrays. To test the concept, a simpler structure will be built in the Phase I program, where the active-matrix silicon array will be replaced by a 4x4 electrode array. In addition to the device fabrication effort, the work involves testing to establish the spatial resolution, contrast ratio, phase dynamic range, and pixel crosstalk (both electrical and optical) of the bilayer modulator. The Phase II program will fabricate a full-scale transparent silicon active-matrix bilayer modulator with 512x512 pixels and a 1 kHz frame rate. The anticipated benefits of this program include significant advances in the realization of high-speed optical correlators for machine vision, holographic image reconstruction systems, programmable 3-D memories, and both head-mounted and projection displays. Commercial applications of the bilayer modulator include page composers for 3-D optical storage media, programmable holographic image reconstruction, adaptive optical wavefront correctors, head-mounted and projection display components, and Fourier-plane complex spatial filters for optical correlators intended for machine vision and pattern recognition.