Development of low cost deformable bimorph mirrors for use in adaptive optics

Abstract

This paper describes the recent progress made in the development of deformable bimorph mirrors as part of an adaptive optics toolkit -a set of low cost plug and play components aimed at non specialist applications engineers and scientists. The paper addresses the design issues, the manufacturability and the reliability, and discusses the compromises that arise due to cost and performance considerations. Current mirror designs have 55 or 31 electrodes, a deformation stroke of up to 80µm across a 40mm diameter, and a resonant frequency of up to 5kHz for a 25mm diameter device.