Segmented MEMS deformable-mirror for wavefront correction

Abstract

Advances in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology are enabling the design and fabrication of new class of deformable mirrors (DM) for adaptive optics (AO). This paper presents a MEMS DM design that is suitable for a large range of applications. More than 7.5 μm of stroke has been demonstrated for this DM with 125 V drive. Other minor design variations have shown 1.63 μm step responses of 120 μs and 140 μs rise and fall times with only a 36 V drive. The DMs have excellent optical quality of 6-20 nm rms that varies with temperature only 0.56 nm/°C peak-to-valley.