Micro-opto-electro-mechanical, (MOEM), adaptive optic system

This paper discusses the application of MOEM technology to adaptive optics. An experiment is described in which a micromachined mirror array is used in a closed loop adaptive optic demonstration. An interferometer wavefront sensor is used for wavefront sensing. Parallel analog electronics are used for the wavefront reconstruction. Parallel operational amplifiers are used to drive the micromirrors. The actuators utilize a novel silicon design developed by SY Technology, Inc. The actuators have a measured frequency response of 15kHz, and a maximum usable stroke of I microns. The entire adaptive optic demonstration has a bandwidth exceeding 10kHz. Measured performance is described. The experiments conducted are designed to explore the feasibility of creating a single chip adaptive optic system, also described in this paper. This chip would combine all on a single VLSI chip aspects of a complete adaptive optics system, wavefront sensing, wavefront reconstruction, and wavefront correction. The wavefront sensing would be accomplished with a novel compact shearing interferometer design The analog refractive and diffractive micro optics will be fabricated using a new single step analog mask technology. The reconstruction circuit would use an analog resistive grid solver. The resistive grid would be fabricated in polysilicon The drive circuits and micromirror actuators would use standard CMOS silicon fabrication methods.