Deformable Mirrors with Thermal Actuators

thermal actuators. DeformableMirrorsThermalActuators.png

"Adaptive optics is applied in lasers, scientific instrumentation, ultra- fast sciences, ophthalmology and material processing. For successful use in these applications, the deformable mirrors must be simple, inexpensive, reliable and effi- cient. Most of the currently used technologies based on piezoelectric, electrostrictive, electromagnetic and electrostatic actuation are rather expensive. We report on a novel type of ultra-low-cost deformable mirror with actuators based on thermal expansion. The 19-channel one inch deformable mirror has response time of ≈ 15 s, actuator stroke of about 6 µm, temporal stability of about λ/10 rms in the visible range. The mirror has shown good correction ability for low-order Zernike polyno- mials, therefore it can be used for correction of rather large aberrations with slow changing amplitudes in both temporal and spatial domains."

Voltar à página inicial.

(c) Tiago Charters de Azevedo