Large-Area High Dynamic Range Monolithic Membrane Mirror Technology

Applications in laser communication and high-power laser weapons could benefit significantly from the availability of a high dynamic range, large-area wavefront corrector. Deformable mirrors are often the key and performance-limiting components in suchsystems. High-speed, low-cost, low-weight, and compactness are also requirements for space- and air-borne systems. This Phase I program will design fabricate and test technologies and concepts that could lead to a large area, high-dynamic range,monolithic, deformable, thin-film MEMS-actuator-driven spatial light modulating mirror. The modulator will be built atop a tiled array of VLSI driver chips. The Phase I will investigate the fabrication of tileable chips with corrector elements on a 1 mmpitch and a monolithic mirror reflector over the actuators. Electrical addressing of a tiled array will be a major focus of the Phase I study. The Phase I will also focus on designs that will lead to large stroke (~10d radians at near infraredwavelengths), high speed (100 ¿s pixel response speed) and on developing suitable electrostatic MEMS actuators and high-voltage VLSI driver chips. In the Phase II program a 28.7cm x 28.7 cm device will be fabricated by tiling four 5.6-inch square devicesto demonstrate scalability of the concept. The proposed modulator is expected to offer large phase dynamic range (large stroke), low-voltage and low power operation, low weight, scalability to millions of actuators, fast rise time (100 microseconds),electrically-independent actuators, excellent surface figure, high laser power damage threshold, and low manufacturing cost.Commercial applications of the resulting MEMS phase modulator and its intensity counterpart include (1) large-screen projection displays, (2) low-cost wavefront correctors (such as retinal imagers and supernormal human vision systems) for the commercialand amateur astronomy markets, (3) low-cost mirror shutters for general-purpose use, and for applications in laser radar and printing, and (4) spatial light modulators for optical signal processing applications.