MOEMS spatial light modulator development at the Center for Adaptive Optics

The National Science Foundation Center for Adaptive Optics (CfAO) is coordinating a program for the development of spatial light modulators suitable for adaptive optics applications based on micro-optoelectromechanical systems (MOEMS) technology. This collaborative program is being conducted by researchers at several partner institutions including the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center, Boston Micromachines, Boston University, Lucent Technologies, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The goal of this program is to produce MEMS spatial light modulators with several thousand actuators that can be used for high-resolution wavefront control applications that would benefit from low device cost, small system size, and low power requirements. The two primary applications targeted by the CfAO are astronomy and vision science. In this paper, we present an overview of the CfAO MEMS development plan along with details of the current program status.