KOSEN 한인과학기술자네트워크

Micromachined Deformable Mirrors for Beam Control and Imaging Applications Primary Sponsor: Department of Defense Deadline: 4/11/2001 KEYWORDS TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Materials / Processes OBJECTIVE: Develop scaleable, low-cost, deformable mirrors, for application to laser wavefront control and active aberration compensation for imaging and communication through the atmosphere, and for other dynamic aberrating media. DESCRIPTION: Adaptive optical systems are a potential avenue for enhancing Air Force and DOD imaging, communications, and laser systems performance. Examples include space-to-ground and ground-to-ground communications, enhanced battlefield imaging, laser-based missile defense systems, laser illumination of a target through the atmosphere, smart-missile target identification, enhanced laser amplifier energy extraction, enhanced non-linear optics conversion via laser intensity profile control, and remote imaging and sensing. At the present time, there are no commercial deformable mirrors with sufficient engineering control, low-cost, and adequate response times to address the needs of the military community. The requirements for deformable mirrors, including disposability in some applications, make micromachining an attractive option for fabrication. Useful deformable mirrors must have good surface quality, to avoid loss of the incident radiation due to scatter and misdirection. Their architecture should address wire-packing problems currently facing the scaling of surface micromachined architectures. Deformable mirror surfaces should be capable of accepting dielectric coatings to enhance their reflectivity and increase their laser damage threshold. Novel actuator concepts are sought, to achieve useful actuator densities and cycling lifetimes. PHASE I: Study micromachined mirror concepts, and demonstrate feasibility for low cost, high quality deformable mirrors. Design and show feasibility of suitable wavefront test procedures for the deformable mirrors to be studied. PHASE II: Design and demonstrate micromachined deformable mirrors using the concepts studied in phase I. Fabricate and study scientific and engineering prototypes to understand their behavior and characteristics, and to elucidate potential processes to produce, assemble and test them. Develop optical diagnostic instrumentation capable of characterizing deformable mirrors after assembly, using the concepts demonstrated in Phase I. PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: The deformable mirrors developed under this topic will have value to commercial manufacturers of lasers and nonlinear optical systems used in displays, projection equipment, astronomical adaptive telescopes, photolithographic systems, surveillance and laser machining equipment. Small systems meeting the topic requirements would have many commercial and military customers. REFERENCES: (1) J. D. Mansell and R.L. Byer. "Silicon Micromachined Deformable Mirror". April 1998. SPIE vol. 3353. (2) T. G. Bifano, J. Perreault, R. Krishnamoorthy-Mali, and M. N. Horenstein. "Microelectromechanical deformable mirrors". IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 5, 83-9, (1999). KEYWORDS: Micromachining, Deformable mirror, Adaptive optics, Abberation, Laser wavefront control. DoD Notice: Between January 2 and February 28, 2001, you may talk directly with the DoD scientists and engineers who authored the solicitation topics, to ask technical questions about the topics. The Topic Author is listed in the box below. For reasons of competitive fairness, direct communication between proposers and topic authors is not allowed after February 28, 2001, when DoD begins accepting proposals under this solicitation. TPOC: Howard Schlossberg PHONE: 703-696-7549 EMAIL: Howard.schlossberg@afosr.af.mil After February 28, 2001 proposers may still submit written questions about solicitation topics through the SBIR/STTR Interactive Topic Information System (SITIS). If you have general questions about DoD SBIR program, please contact the DoD SBIR Help Desk at (800) 382-4634 or email to SBIRHELP@teltech.com. NOTE: The Solicitations listed on this site are copies from the various SBIR agency solicitations and are not necessarily the latest and most up-to-date. For this reason, you should use the agency link listed below which will take you directly to the appropriate agency server where you can read the official version of this solicitation and download the appropriate forms and rules. The official link for this solicitation is: http://www.acq.osd.mil/sadbu/sbir/sttr01/dod_sttr01.htm. DoD will begin accepting proposals on March 1, 2001. The solicitation closing date is April 11, 2001.