Chip-scale Integrated Driver for Electrostatic DM Control

摘要

A complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) electronics driver chip to control a microelectromechanical (MEMS) deformable mirror (DM) has been developed. MEMS DMs have a wide range of uses in correcting time-varying aberrations in microscope and telescope imaging, laser beam forming applications and secure free-space communications. MEMS DMs that have been demonstrated are often quite small and consume very little power. Correspondingly, small electronic drivers would allow adaptive optics systems of unprecedented compactness. With the advances in CMOS technology, it has become possible to design and fabricate electronics operable at higher voltages than those in traditional integrated circuits. Since MEMS structures often require relatively high operating voltages to energize electrostatic actuators, these high voltage CMOS fabrication processes offer promise for miniaturization of the corresponding drivers. This paper introduces an integrated electronic driver developed to operate one particular type of MEMS mirror structure, requiring more than a hundred independently addressable control channels, each of which can be varied from ground potential to hundreds of volts.