Microscale, Inc. — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: S2.01

Description

This SBIR Phase I project aims to develop an innovative batch fabrication technique to create single crystal PMN-PT stack actuator deformable mirrors (DM) at low cost of up to one order of magnitude reduction to those offered by the state of the art manufacturing techniques. The method, being applicable to produce high-performance deformable mirrors with a large variety of pixel densities and actuator counts, is also proposed to seamlessly integrate the DM manufacturing process with a novel low-power HVA-based driver ASIC, hence an enhancement of the proposed batch manufacturing process by reliably packaging DMs with high yield, zero failure pixel, and with high optical qualities, and on top of these offering ultra low crosstalk among DM pixels which is demanded for high-resolution mirror surface control. Low pay load, high performances, low cost, and low power, are the four keys that can lead a DM to successful implementation into NASA's high-performance systems. For lab testing, concept inspiration, and concept validation, the AO communities need high-performance but low-cost DMs to study wide variety of AO concepts on a tight budget and in a timely fashion; on the other hand, once an AO concept is approved, a space-based adaptive optics system will additionally demand low payload and low power dissipation for space-based deployment. The proposed DM manufacturing and ASIC integration technique aims to develop DMs to meet the two staged needs through one joint DM development program.