Dielectric and Optical Properties of Sputtered Thin Films

摘要

Of critical importance to the eventual performance of numerous coherent optical image processors and highly parallel computers is the development of a high speed, recyclable, linear, high resolution, selectively erasable image storage transducer operable in nearly real time. Applications for such a transducer abound, including incoherent-to-coherent conversion, pattern recognition and image feature extraction, level slicing, edge enhancement, low light level image integration, scratch pad memory, and page composition for data entry in holographic memory systems. In response to this need, a wide variety of candidate devices have been proposed in the past ten years, based on photochromic, liquid crystal, photorefractive, magnetooptic, electrooptic, deformable membrane, thermoplastic, photodichroic, and ambidextrous effects in numerous configurations. The device category comprised of Electrooptic Spatial Light Modulators contains a number of leading candidates, due to a combination of wide dynamic range, high sensitivity, intermediate storage time, relative simplicity of construction and operation, and long term durability. This category includes the Pockels Readout Optical Modulator or PROM, a Soviet modification of the PROM called the PRIZ, the Microchannel Spatial Light Modulator, the TITUS and photo-TITUS, and the Photorefractive Incoherent-to-Coherent Optical Converter.